The Traveler

There is a mild flow of books within my family. My mother-in-law will read something, and give it to one of her daughters, who will pass it to another, or the reverse. Doesn't happen a lot, but its not rare, either. Usually, the books don't interest me. Either they're what my wife calls 'Oprah books', or they're pretty lightweight. One of the ones that she dropped off a few weeks ago, though, is quite different. It's The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks.

I'm immediately put on guard when the author's name is 'twelve hawks'. I find myself believing that it's like that scene in 1941 where a girl says to the dance hall maestro "Sam....your name isn't really Sam, is it? " He nods, slowly, and she goes on "What is it, really? " He looks at her. "It's Raoul". She's ecstatic. "Raoul! I knew it couldn't be something ordinary! And your last name -- what is it? " He looks down. "Lipshitz." I just figure that this guy is really named Johnson, or Cunningham, but he wanted a memorable name. Twelve Hawks, yeah, that'll work. As it turns out, though, The Traveler doesn't need that hook. It's a pretty good book.

I sometimes have tendencies toward a dark suspicion regarding authority. I'm not going to hole up in a shack somewhere in Montana, living completely off the grid, and I don't believe in some of the great conspiracy theories, like the black helicopters or the grassy knoll or any of that. Its not that I don't think there are people who'd like those things to be true, or who would act so as to make them true; I just find it hard to believe that any movement can be simultaneously globally effective, sinister, and unknown. I do believe that there are things we take for granted as normal, though, that either are anything but normal, or that could very easily lend themselves to use by nefarious people in support of clandestine goals. When I read about the number of security cameras in Britain, for example, or the use of facial recognition software, I think yeah, that could be a leading indicator.

Twelve Hawks would say that there's nothing leading about it. In The Traveler, he posits that it's already here, and that many of the things that can make life a bit unnerving, like bland, dead-eyed politicians, legal use of GPS trackers to follow people who aren't charged with any crime, and corporations allowed to have the same communications rights -- but not responsibilities -- as actual people, not to mention the prevalence of mind-numbing daytime television and the success of Fox News, are all parts of a movement to control the globe and its inhabitants. Think Thrush, from the Man From U.N.C.L.E series, only vastly more effective, more intelligently run. They really are out to get you -- or at least control you.

The Traveler isn't a book for people who believe in conspiracies. But if you like dystopian novels, it's pretty good.