Theocracy: Fictional and Not So Much

Lyda Morehouse's AngeLINK series is under-recognized and under-appreciated. I can't find any discussion of it online, which seems kind of odd, given how topical it is. Maybe it's because the first book came out right around September 11, the fourth book was finished a few years later while we were still in the depths of the Iraq War, and they were only issued in pocketbook-sized paperbacks by Roc — not one of the big names in science fiction publishing.

When I first read the books, which I think was just after the last one came out in 2004, I already knew they were something special (see her permanent spot on my All-Time Favorites sidebar). Rereading them close to 20 years later has not changed my impression.

A quick summary. The first three books take place in the 2070s and the last one is in the 2090s. Communication technology has continued to advance to the point where most people have the "LINK" embedded in their heads. An unthinkable mid-century war destroyed swaths of the globe, and the political backlash turned the people of almost every country against science and secularism so that theocracies reign supreme. Only people who swear allegiance to a religion can have the LINK, which is where all of civil society and legitimate commerce takes place.

The fact that the plot of the books revolves around angels and God being real is, I think, less important than the world Morehouse creates, the way she portrays various political and religious factions reacting to events. What would it be like to live in a technological world going through the Apocalypse with a capital A? Her fictional press coverage of media trying to figure out which person (or AI) is the Antichrist is the best recurring part of the books.

Morehouse's vision of what it would be like to live in a technological theocracy feels a bit too real these days. We have a Supreme Court majority that seems bent on bringing us theocracy, and a newly energized traditional Catholic legal theory that's motivating a wave of future judges (if it isn't already motivating several Supreme Court justices). We've got the Claremont Institute, home of insurrectionist John Eastman, which has given up on democracy and sees Americans who aren't conservative Christians as nonAmericans. And just yesterday there was the New York Young Republican Club, where the club president said, "We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war."

It was weird to be reading these books at this time. But maybe living at this time is why I wanted to read them again.

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The four books of the series:

• Archangel Protocol
• Fallen Host
• Messiah Node
• Apocalypse Array
  

I just found out there's a sort-of prequel: Resurrection Code, published in 2011. I'll have to get that soon. 

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An afterthought: It occurred to me as I was writing this up that the events of AngeLINK could almost be in a historical line with Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, which takes place several centuries farther into the future, after religious wars turned the world toward secularism and away from gender as an organizing principle.