But Simmons seems to have gone on some kind of political bender lately. This blog-entry/story is raving. To summarise, in April he wrote a little story about meeting a traveller from the future who tells him that oh noes, in the future Europe is 'Eurabia' and America will stand alone against 'Islamofascism'.
'Sharia will be the universal law of Eurabia... You peace loving Europeans. You civil-liberties loving Americans. You Athenian invertebrates with your love of your own exalted sensibilities ... you are too timid, too fearful, too decent, to match the ruthlessness of your enemies.'
Only a person who has never been to London or Amsterdam could believe that Europeans are teetering on the brink of implementing sharia law. And who thinks that too much love for peace and civil liberties is what threatens our future?
This has put me right off Simmons. BTW it seems to me that artificial words like 'Eurabia' and 'Islamofascism' (like 'Feminazi' and 'dhimmitude') are substitutes for thinking (for instance for thinking 'how likely are European people to embrace fundamentalist Islam?'). Are any of these portmanteau political coinings any good? I can't think of any just now.