Posted on 03/12/2006 3:16:46 PM PST by nwrep
While Robert Ferrigno's ninth novel, "Prayers for the Assassin," is set in 2040, it feels a lot like 1984.
Instead of Big Brother, there's a moderate Islamic Republic calling the shots. In this futuristic North America, dirty bombs purportedly detonated by Israel have splintered the country into a Christian Nation down South, a haven for Jews in Canada and a society where Super Bowls come with midday prayers to Mecca and men-only cheerleading squads.
Vegas, well, it's still Vegas.
Fans of Ferrigno's more intimate thrillers will find his trademark characters: morally conflicted, violent and on the run. But the backdrop to "Prayers" is a frightening scenario that is unabashedly controversial and allows current political questions to play out in a speculative future. A post-9/11 look at terrorism through the eyes of a storyteller of Ferrigno's level, sweeping as it is, leaves more than a few questions unanswered.
Ferrigno answered questions from his home in Kirkland, Wash. His answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Your books to date have been character-based, somewhat intimate affairs dealing with one or two individuals. Why the departure?
I don't see the book as a change in kind but a change in scale. Speaking like a painter, I wanted to work bigger. Like most of my books, "Prayers" features a tough, morally challenged protagonist, his smarter and tougher girlfriend, various sadists, psychos and powerful brokers, but it's within a larger and I hope, more meaningful context. Most of us will not have to deal with the characters and situations in my previous books, but all of us are going to have to live with the collision of Islam with the West.
What motivated you to take on a sweeping novel that is part science fiction set in the future with a radical social/political landscape and controversial subject matter?
Ambition and a sense that we are all surfboarding down a slope of broken glass. Momentous events are happening, and the world is changing faster than any writer can keep up with. After 9/11, it seemed like creative risks were required to even have a chance for me to make sense of things, which is what I think the function of the writer is.
How hard was it to find the voice for your Muslim characters?
Not hard in the slightest. They're Americans. I find it rather amusing that most people have to reassure themselves that the premise of the book -- a mass conversion of millions of Americans to Islam because in a time of vast social upheaval, the certainty of Islam is more attractive than tepid pieties from church and state -- is impossible. We have had mass conversions before, during the 1920s and Great Depression, when values were challenged and poverty was epidemic. Aimee Semple McPherson led tent revivals that were broadcast over radio and converted millions of desperate Americans to her form of Christianity.
Islam is currently the fastest-growing religion in Germany and Great Britain among young adults, with most of the converts college-educated women. Researchers studying this were surprised to find that the women were not converting to satisfy some Muslim boyfriend but because they took comfort in the clear answers that Islam gives to all life's questions. Freedom is a heavy burden, and in times of crisis, many people would gladly toss the burden aside.
So the American Muslims of "Prayers" are just like you and I, they go to football games, drive cars, want to look fashionable and drink soft drinks. It's just different. The Super Bowl features only male cheerleaders, the cars have chimes that call the faithful to prayer, the fashions are modest and the soft drink of choice is Jihad Cola.
What would you do about the Middle East and the war of terror if you were king?
I would recognize my limitations. I consider this the highest quality in any ruler and the one in most short supply.
Do you advocate any form of isolationism or closing our borders to immigration?
Exactly the opposite. I advocate engagement and education, and most of all, confidence in the superiority of liberal democracy. We have nothing to apologize for. The preface of "Prayers" is an ancient Arabic proverb: "The falling camel attracts many knives."
www.prayersfortheassassin.com.
Joe Kurmaskie recently reviewed "A Fool's Gold" by Bill Merritt for The Oregonian.
Ping
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
"All male cheerleaders at the Super Bowl"
JUST WHAT IN HELL DOES ISLAM HAVE AGAINST WOMEN!!?
Sorry. Yeah, I know, it's in the Koran that women are the devil's temptresses, blah blah blah.
The bottom line: suicide bombers are mostly unemployed men without women (and who don't seem to want them, either).
And when an entire `world' (Islam) chooses to cut itself off from one-half of its intelligence pool, hey, that makes combating Islam that much easier.
The "certainty of Islam"? What crap. The only things certain
in Islam is that you will have a miserable life followed by
eternity in Hell.
Quite astute. Hitlerism and Communism thrived on the same human weakness.
Some people, not "many" Americans. Most Americans don't have a clue how free they are now, but if faced with a clear choice they would rather die than permanently give up their [substitute favorite version of freedom here].
Agreed. Things would never get as far as described in the book. There will be no universal Caliphate. The book sounds like it rests on some dubious assumptions. A southern christian nation with Jews exiled to Canada? I don't think so. It's fiction only.
I'd rather live down south in a Christian nation than in Canada.
Is this madcap writer related to that other madcap cartoon character/actor Lou?
I read a little bit about it on earlier threads and thought it was just futurist nonsense - but I didn't realize that it had a heavy anti-Israel subtext, or that it had strange things such as Jews being exiled to Canada from the "Christian" area.
Is the author a Muslim? He certainly sounds like one in the interview.
I was not disparaging the south in any way, if that is how you read my post. Jews would be welcomed in such a "nation" -- I find the premise of good fiction is a foothold in reality and an understanding of human nature. I don't see much of either in the book as described. That is the implausibility which I referenced.
Only the feeble minded would convert to a death cult....
"What a pathetic piece of delusional drivel this book is!!"
Actually, it's a pretty good piece of fiction. Lot of
people said what you said about "1984" back when IT was
published.
I agree that the premise is drivel. Comparing a conversion of Christians to .... Christianity with a conversion to an alien religion that enslaves the women and enforces a 7th century Arab culture on all its adherents is simply absurd. The response to a crisis like he describes in the book is some serious ass-kicking.
This is obviously coming from a man who has little faith in his own culture or in its dominant religion.
1984 had a very believable premise, one that was demonstrated in Communist nations at the time it was written. This book does not have a believable premise.
"This book does not have a believable premise."
That, friend, is a premise I don't agree with.
The more people know about Islam, the more they dislike it (hence recent polls that show that Islam is viewed LESS favorably than after 9-11). It could only take hold here by the sword, and my friend, they ain't enough swords in Araby.
a mass conversion of millions of Americans to Islam because in a time of vast social upheaval
Maybe to wipe their backsides with koran, otherwise, get a grip..sheesh!!
Big difference. In 1984, the premise was simply a slight exaggeration of an already prevailing state of affairs in the God-forsaken communist world. In the case of this book, it is a bizarre premise that has never once been played out in the 1400 year history of the Islamic blood cult, i.e. willing and voluntary conversion of millions of Christians to the Islamic blood cult.
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