In the middle of this fraught geopolitical nightmare, possibly the worst event happens: A military base at Leuchars, U.K., is vaporized by an atomic bomb. Who set it off, and why? Stateless terrorists, or secret agents of some nation? (The attack is quickly followed by a dozen other assaults on the infrastructure of the U.K., assaults that don't hew to any discernible pattern or strategy.) And was the explosion caused by a conventional nuke, or something much more revolutionary, a device possibly relying on new discoveries in quantum physics?

For a week or so, the whole globe will be in turmoil, escalating toward a final war. Our main actors will comprise the following:

The British Travis family: father James, daughter Roisin and son Alec. James is an expert programmer and hacker who has secretly gone to work for the French, with his handler being a Frenchman named Gauthier. Roisin is a young woman engaged in countercultural, anarchist/pacifist activities. Alec is a soldier deployed in Kazakhstan. In a sense, the three constitute an Everyman faction arrayed against authority.

But the authorities are not helpless or stupid. There's snuff-snorting Maxine Smith, from MI5, and a deadly utilitarian U.S. spook named Jeff Paulson, among others.

And operating midway between citizen and soldier with patented 21st-century infowar methods are a trio of Boston disinformation experts, Bob Cartwright, Sarah Henk and Anne-Marie Chretien. Their job is to flood the web with slanted information for whomever pays their salary. But are they good enough to trip up Mark Dark, expert politico-blogger, who happens to live in his mom's basement?

At the interface between thriller and SF

Given Ken MacLeod's past predilection for sharp, savvy and close-up examination of how the balky, unpredictable, irrational human beast interacts via the means of politics, as exemplified already in his more space-opera-istic novels, it comes as no surprise that in this near-future thriller he is able to conjure up with stunning plausibility and verisimilitude a catastrophic global situation that seems to flow inexorably out of our present-day mess. So much, however, any thriller writer worth his salt can do. But MacLeod's genius contribution that raises the stakes comes midway through the book, when he reveals that—minor spoiler here, though I won't reveal the whole punchline—this is really an alternate timeline. This distancing effect allows us to view the events more as a controlled lab experiment than as pure prediction, and also buffers against any accusations of getting something wrong. A canny move.

And, of course, the whole angle of the revolution in quantum physics is another SF touch that pays off big in the end.

But ultimately this book is about the people. MacLeod's depiction of the Travis family is deep and insightful (although by necessity Alec remains something of an offstage cipher, thus blunting a certain emotional impact he's supposed to have). MacLeod does not make the mistake of delineating only simon-pure heroes and nasty villains, either. All players on all sides are given their share of humanity.

As for MacLeod's ability to deliver highly topical information and speculations in jetstream prose, that's just a given. He knows just how to convey suspense and terror, too, as in a torture scene where any close-up of the actual torture is elided without diminishing the horror. This novel possesses the bravura speed and thrills we wish for in any such book.

With its elaborate net of betrayals and its fog of misinterpretation, MacLeod's novel comes to resemble Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973). In its portrayal of a nation reacting in confusion to an invasion, we catch echoes of J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun (1984).

My two critiques of the book concern the role of coincidence and the main symbolic motif. The centrality of the Travis family to events sometimes beggars belief. And the notion of "the execution channel"—a pirate TV feed that reports on deaths inflicted and experienced by every faction—seems really to be an extraneous element.

But aside from these minor cavils, this book charts a mad passage through dangerous waters with panache and compassion.