mataglap -- an Indonesian word meaning "dark eye" or, probably, "dilated eye." It is an indication that someone is about to go berserk and start killing people at random. Used in Walter Jon Williams' novel Aristoi as the name of a berserk form of nanotechnology that devoured the planet.

You can e-mail Mataglap SF at mataglap@yahoo.com

 
Anyone who has browsed around on this site knows Ian McDonald is one of my least favorite writers, but it's not necessarily his fault, and of course he has many admirers who think enough of his work to get just about anything nominated that has his name on it.  So here we have this story, set in the same universe as "River of Gods", which I still haven't been able to bring myself to read yet, but it doesn't really matter.  In a future Delhi, the human residents share the city with the semi-mythical djinn, which are some kind of nanobot AI that seem to still manifest themselves in human form occasionally and have actual names and responsibilities.  The story focuses on Esha, a traditional dancer who becomes entangled with one of those djinn named A.J., and ultimately they get married.  Needless to say there are some insurmountable problems of coping with each other's daily lives and habits, and Esha as it turns out can't really cope, to the point that she plots against her husband.

So as far as it goes, the plot doesn't really cover anything particularly original, but as we know from McDonald's other writing that isn't his point, he's come up with a richly detailed exotic future full of foreign words and place names that are rattled off without explanation, with a whole political subplot in the background around two competing regions fighting over whether a dam gets built or not.  In the midst of all this high-stakes intrigue, this small personal story gets played out, and in some respect affects the course of history, so there is that element.  Also, McDonald would seem to have taken as a point of departure the notion that swarms of self-aware nanobot AI are the real explanation behind the mythical genie (i.e. djinn), and they seem to be something that has always existed and not just created by humans.   Esha is stubborn and independent minded enough to get herself married to one, but as a reader you can't really see why she would, and she obviously hasn't thought this through as it doesn't take long for her to realize that A.J is, for all his human trappings, alien in the extreme.

Unlike many McDonald stories, this one has a linear, comprehensible plot with a beginning, middle and end, which should be a good thing, but I feel once again like it fails to live up to the backdrop that he has so meticulously assembled around it.  By making the story easily related to and following a more conventional narrative, you can't help but focus your attention more towards plot and away from setting, but since the plot is kind of thin, I find the end result unsatisfying.
posted by Mark at 10:26 PM