ROBERT ZUBRIN

Satire is tough. Its greatest strengths — its topicality, its ability to connect with readers through familiar associations — are often its greatest weaknesses. Nothing dates more quickly than topicality; vide all of the 80's SF novels in which the Soviet Union were still major villians hundreds of years in the future. Also, in order to make trenchant commentaries upon real life, satires like The Holy Land take place in their own farcical unreality, a world so topsy-turvy and deranged that it ends up being the only way to illustrate what is wrong with the world we live in. It's a form of artistic reductio ad absurdam that can hit bullseyes every time when at its best (say, Dr. Strangelove) but can all too easily go over the top into excess if handled poorly (say, Natural Born Killers).

The Holy Land never quite rises to the manic heights of, say, Terry Pratchett in full battle dress, but it doesn't stumble either. A full-on skewering of the current geopolitical situation involving the U.S., Israel, Palestine, religious extremism, and terrorism, it's a sharp, witty story that carpet-bombs literally everybody, every side, every ideology with equal shock-and-awe. Zubrin handles it like a pro. There are more laugh-out-loud moments in the book than I would have thought possible. To be honest, his targets (the manipulative media; selfish greedy politicians; religious zealots; the faceless mob) are pretty easy. Still, if you come to The Holy Land looking for a hearty chuckle at the expense of our crazy modern world, you've hit the jackpot.

The story begins with the invasion of Kennewick, Washington by the Minervans, an alien race who claim Kennewick as their ancient holy land. The rabidly fundamentalist Christian government of the United States responds not at all well to this, but the Western Galactic Empire, who have long had a policy of unilateral support for the Minervans, merely shrugs and smiles and regrets there's nothing it can do. But to appease the Americans, the WGE provides them with some spiffy technology, and offers to pay them large sums of WGE currency ("bluebacks," a brilliant sort of double-pun poking fun at cowardly foreign policies dictated by financial interests) for the right to mine "helicity," a rare natural resource the WGE needs and which happens to be plentiful in America.

Though the Americans certainly enjoy the WGE's money, this doesn't stop them from waging war on the intrusive Minervans, training children for martyrdom missions and secretly sponsoring terrorists to blow up WGE planets (using tools and technology they've bought with WGE money). Some folks might think Zubrin has well crossed the line of good taste with such direct referents to September 11, but since he is very open about his novel's intent to satirize virtually the entire world political landscape resulting from that event, it's certainly gutsy of him to go for it. If any part of this novel is off-putting to readers, it will be Christian readers who don't like the parallels being drawn between Islamist fundamentalism in reality, and Christian fundamentalism as represented in the book by the U.S. president and his lackeys. But Zubrin is simply making the point that any kind of religious extremism informing government policy is absurd and dangerous. (And with some of the extremism being expressed by certain individuals among the Christian right in this country these days, to say "it can't happen here" is woefully naive.)

So in the book, the Minervans represent the Israelis, obviously; the WGE, the Americans (in real life); and the Americans (in the book) stand in for the Palestinians. But if the novel were simply an exercise in symbols doing symbolic things, it would be merely that, an exercise. A more-clever-than-average Saturday Night Live sketch played out to feature length.

Zubrin makes The Holy Land a real novel by anchoring the story in two sympathetic protagonists: Aurora, a Minervan priestess, and Andrew Hamilton whom she has captured during an unsuccessful attack on Kennewick, and whom she now considers a "study specimen." Hamilton bristles at the patronizing way virtually all of the aliens (the WGE and Minervans alike) dismiss Earthlings as subhuman, though it's a perception certainly not helped by violent mass rallies staged by the U.S. Hamilton knows he simply won't gain any sympathy for his people unless he can convince Aurora that Earthlings are at least somewhat human. Though the ultimate outcome of their growing relationship is kind of obvious, their scenes still make for some of the book's funniest and most heartfelt. The best example is from late in the book, when Hamilton takes Aurora in disguise to his parents' house to hide her from the mob; a sequence that could easily have been lathered in mawkishness comes across as the book's most genuine. (In fact, I thought Hamilton's kid sister Sally was the book's best character overall, and I was sad she disappeared from the proceedings so quickly.)

If Zubrin has chosen easy satirical targets, at least he roasts them well. I have to commend Zubrin for the way he's managed to turn post-9/11 lunacy into comedy without sliding into sitcommish banality, and even moreso for doing what only the best satires dare to do: throw landmines in your path. Occasionally bringing something that isn't funny at all (like the spectre of children having their arms blown off) smack dab into the midst of the story's hijinx is a sobering way to remind you that while this book might be laughable, the reality it is commenting upon certainly isn't. Zubrin isn't consistently good with this. The book's infrequent indulgences in graphic violence work in the earlier scenes, but in the finale they come across as too Hollywoodish.

But considering how difficult a tightrope walk this sort of book is to write, on the whole Zubrin has far more hits than misses here. Whether or not The Holy Land is the Strangelove of its generation, perhaps the best compliment I can give it might actually not sound like a compliment: I wish the world situation weren't so insane that books like this were necessary.