I read a lot of total crap, and one of my recurring crap authors has been John Ringo. He's a total nutjob politically, but he writes good battle scenes and is an enjoyable read once you cut through the nonsense. Still, I'm having a tough time getting through the opening chapters of The Last Centurion. In this book, Ringo constructs a near-future world where Hillary Clinton is president, global cooling is the problem, and the chemicals from processed food and big farming are life saving.

Let's take those one at a time.

One of Ringo's favorite tropes is that the left, and the Clintons especially, are what's wrong with America. It's hard to convey the dripping scorn with which he discusses these topics, but it involves a lot of naughty words. In this book, Hillary Clinton (or a straw woman facsimile thereof) is president through the Big Chill and the simultaneous deadly bird flu outbreak, and she makes every mistake possible. While Hillary Clinton is not my favorite politician, it's worth noting that our current president (who can do little wrong in Ringo's eyes) has actually made almost every mistake possible, and this makes Ringo's text unbearably difficult to read. If Ringo is hoping to even tell a good story, much less sway anyone's opinion, he'd be better off with less in the way of textual histrionics.

Another one of Ringo's tropes is that the global warming hypothesis is nonsense. Not only does he mention this frequently, but he literally pauses in the middle of his books to deliver four page diatribes on the subject. In this latest book, Ringo makes the next big climate change event a major solar COOLING, which has predictable effects on the food supply. Now, I'm a scientist and a lefty, and I've even worked on science relevant to climate change, so presumably (by Ringo's criteria) I am unfit to comment, being moderately knowledgeable. But when your social commentary depends entirely on fiction, it loses any relevance and becomes a distraction.

The most interesting novelty in this book (which presumably will become another abortive series, to join the ranks of his other five unfinished series?) is the device where American lives are saved by having eaten so many processed foods. As far as I can tell, the idea is that eating processed foods conveys resistance to chicken flu, and this leads to a dramatically greater survival rate in America. I'm not sure why this device is in the book, unless it's another imaginary nail in Ringo's imaginary coffin of liberalism. Whyever it's there, it's entertainingly stupid -- there's plenty of evidence that weird, random chemicals do weird, random things to your DNA, and that's one reason why cancer is so prevalent. There's no reason at all to believe that these chemicals would somehow "cancel out" bird flu. But what do I know? I'm just a molecular freakin' biologist...

Combine all that with Ringo's inimitable writing style in which no breasts are too big, no hero goes unfucked by multiple (large-breasted) women, and no terrorist goes unpunished, and these books are truly a piece of work. I do not, however, mean "of art". In fact, this last book is so outlandish that I'm actually becoming a bit suspicious of Ringo's sincerity. It's hard to read such complete and utter crap without thinking that perhaps the author is secretly making fun of the very viewpoints he is espousing. But it's been a consistent trend towards lunacy thus far, so I'm inclined to believe that he's actually somewhat sincere.

Anyway, here's my judgement: Ringo's latest book is masturbatory fodder for hard right wingers, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy his books if you're not actually lobotomized. Luckily that ensures him an 18% market.

--titus