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

 

Kessel works outsidie his normal areas of interest in this engaging space opera spy story, set in the far future where humanity has died out and been recreated somehow by somebody.  The protagonist is a monk from a planet called, for some reason, Helvetica, who is sent by the gods (represented by the voices in his head) to steal  the only copies of a set of five famous plays, for the purpose of holding them ransom in exchange for the freedom of his planet.  Kessel hits the ground running, so to speak, from the first couple of paragraphs, jumping right into the heist story and subsequent chase off planet by the authorities.  Along the way he calls for backup in the form of Nahid, a woman whom he's able to call back to life and who is more trained as a fighter.

In this future, these plays are considered central to cultural identity, but are not allowed to be published or have performances recorded.  When the controlling authority chooses to have the plays performed, it downloads the information into the actors minds and then removes it afterwards.  I'm not quite sure why this level of control is necessary, or why if they're so valuable there's only the one copy, but the monk is able to hijack them into his own mind, thereby removing them from their central storage at the same time.  If you buy that, then the rest of the story hangs together, since he is doing this as an agent of his religious order, but when it comes time to deliver the goods to his superiors, he starts to wonder what their motives really are and if he's doing this for the right reasons.

This is a good yarn, well-paced and with a few central characters that have some depth to them in spite of the focus on the action and intrigue necessary for this style of story.  Kessel knows how to deliver, even against his own comfort zone, and produces an engaging result, setting up an intriguing political conflict that he could return to in future stories.
posted by Mark at 9:27 AM