PREDATORS

Although The Lamentations of Julius Marantz is fundamentally about rising and falling, physical gravity and religious gravitas, and its energy rides on a continuous chase, after reading the following recent articles

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175137/droning_on

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175138/alfred_mccoy_surveillance_state_u_s_a_

on Obama's predator drone strategy, and the general growth of techno-spying, I am reminded of my off-the-cuff, but premonitory, use of surveillance as GEKO tracks Julius for the kill.

I had a discussion with my editor about my setting of the story in the recent past rather than in the near future. It seems to me that both literally and metaphorically we are already living the nightmare of Faustian technomagia, with worse likely to come. Hence 2003, easily updated post-Obama.