One thing that I'm noting also, from the few books that I've been reading recently... A number of authors are venting their disapproval of terrorism in their works...
Terry Pratchett's Thud! is a story of an ancient, pointless grudge between dwarves and trolls that goes back centuries. Ankh Morpork is a multi-ethnic, multi-species stew of culture. A group of traditional tunnel-dwelling dwarves drop in from the old country, and start to promote 'spiritual awareness' in the urbanised & 'corrupted' city dwarves and stir up ancient resentment towards the trolls. Then the dwarf holy man is murdered and a troll is suspected, leading to inter-species violence in the streets.
Pratchett's Discworld novels are frequently satires of contemporary events. Such as Going Postal may be a satire of the Enron scandal. Or Soul Music -with my favourite Pratchett quote: "We're bigger than cheeses,"- is a satire of the Beatles.
Orson Scott Card's Shadow of the Giant, where the Caliphate conquered India and commited atrocities. But he did distinct the line between the spirit of the religion, and the power-hungry madmen who were abusing the beliefs of their people.
In Olympos, an old-style human and the moravecs discovered a derelict nuclear submarine, armed with 48 MIRV ICBM missiles, each carrying a payload of 16 'black hole' warheads, which will create 768 mini blackholes ping-ponging around Earth's gravity until the entire planet is obliterated. It is an extremely creative doomsday scenario. The submarine was manned by 26 soldiers of the Global Caliphate. The author was trying to illustrate the mindless & deluded insanity that could inspire man to create such a weapon.
Seems like everyone wants to say something about the Middle East.
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