Excuse me? In “Saturn’s Children” runaway greenhouse effect had caused oceans to boil, and all eukariotic life on Earth is extinct. I would say this qualifies as “environmental crisis”

But while we’re accounting for lacunae, I don’t think Charlie gets enough credit for having clever, no-nonsense women as leading characters, and also for not making a fuss about them. The detective in HS is a case in point.

You’re right, Greg. It’s a long while since I’ve written anything about the train wreck. I’ll get thinking about it. Not always easy to parse out the stuff I can write about work-wise, but very important nonetheless. Thanks.

That those technologies are suppose to deal with shambling horrors from the great beyond just make the books REALLY fun.

That beginning sets up the “but”, doesn’t it?

His worldvisions are so convincing that I believe them while I’m reading. It’s only when I’m out of the book that I see huge lacunae.

Charlie isn’t all that fond of environmentalists, whom he tends to see as scaremongering Luddites, so there is no environmental crisis in his books.

Charlies isn’t all that fond of religion—indeed, he loathes it—so there are no sympathetically-depicted religious folk in his books. Hardly any mention of religion at all, IIRC.

Charlie is a tech whiz and sees a technical future. A future in which everyone is Westernized. There are no other cultures. Or if they’re there, they’re peripheral.

I think it’s possible to imagine very different futures starting with the NOW, futures that don’t shut out environment, religion, and cultural differences. I’m not demanding that Charlie do the imagining; he does a bang-up job with the elements floating about HIS brain. But if folks here are taking Charlie as some sort of future guide, then I’d advise them to beware of the lacunae.

‘This:’ refers to this:

“The reality, though, is that the Internet and its associated tools are developing as the ultimate technology of control. Far from being much able to influence developments in the opposite direction, my professional life has just given me a bird’s eye view of the coming train wreck.”

Eagerly awaiting minds want to know.