Spin Control By Chris Moriarty Discussed May 2007 Buy Spin Control from Amazon.com Buy Spin Control from Lambda Rising

Questions

1. Two big questions at the end of Spin State were whether Cohen had survived as himself and how would the joining of Li and Cohen really work out. Spin Control pretty much ends with the same questions. Or does it? Why do you think Moriarty chose to repeat these themes?
2. What are your thoughts on these non-resolved, non-human life forms issues (both books)?
3. This book focused on the social structures of the Syndicates. Does the internal logic make sense to you? Is Arkasha present a positive or negative critique of this social structure?
4. Why did Moriarty choose to set the Earth portion of the book in the Israel-Palestine conflict (the final conflict of the book occurs on Yom Kippur)? Does that setting help or hinder the book? Is it simply about the golem story and EMET, or is it more?
   • What are the Interfaithers? Why are they prominent in the book?
   • Did the espionage component play a useful role in the book?
   • What did the other comments on human history add (or detract) from the book; the Holocaust in WWII, the war of disease against Native Americans, etc.
5. Although AIs are always referred to with the pronoun "he," Cohen shunts through both male and female bodies. Is this book depicting gender as a flexible thing? Or explicitly inflexible?
6. Both of Moriarty's books make a big deal about different subdivisions of the human species - the natural humans, the Ring communities, the Syndicates, Emergent AI, and the corporate genetic constructs. Do these divisions create an effective space for discussing contemporary divisions in humanity based on race, class, sex, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, etc?
7. What was router/decomposer's role in Spin Control (He chooses the name Kuramoto Yoshiki, approx. p.379)?