Ken Macleod

Fighting has spread across the Middle East and Central Asia to the borders of China. In the US, refugees from climate-change disaster subsist in FEMA camps. Images of official executions circulate on the Internet like al Qaeda videos. State agencies sponsor conspiracy theories as cover-ups. As the troops of the last superpower stand astride the...

The book is classic MacLeod; Jase, Euan, and Murdo are laggers, government conscripts in a war in which only the university-educated and the highly skilled are used for fighting. The three lads are working class, unskilled labour, sent to lag the pipes of Britain as the Gulf stream shifts, to mend roads and to move equipment around for those with...