{"id":5235,"date":"2016-01-27T07:51:38","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T12:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5235"},"modified":"2016-02-01T13:09:12","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T18:09:12","slug":"the-21st-century-spy-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5235","title":{"rendered":"The 21st Century Spy Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"spy,

(photo: David Lytle, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

Some readers may long for the (fictional) days of the Cold War\u2014a nostalgia fueled by the brilliant movie Bridge of Spies<\/a>\u2014<\/em>and the dark-soul novels of John LeCarr\u00e9 and Graham Greene. At least then, we knew who the enemies were. After the disintegration of the iron curtain that protected Soviet secrets, the spy novel became a bit of an anachronism, but now it\u2019s surging back in popularity and creativity, 21st century style.<\/p>\n

While the antagonists may have changed\u2014or, with what\u2019s going on in Russia these days, be cycling back again\u2014clandestine operations persist among countries that are enemies. And, as Wikileaks has reminded us, spying even occurs among friends. \u201cAs a piece of news, this surely sits alongside the Pope\u2019s status as a Catholic,\u201d said Christopher J. Murphy<\/a> for CNN last year. As a consequence, the espionage writer has a lot of conflicts to choose among.<\/p>\n

Tthe techno-thriller subgenre, so well explored in the past by writers like Frederick Forsyth (The Day of the Jackal<\/em>) and Tom Clancy (The Hunt for Red October<\/em>), has rapidly expanded fictional possibilities. Every day, it seems, more sophisticated technologies emerge that can be used to create political instability in other countries or groups and damage their military and economic security.<\/p>\n

A recent Library Journal<\/a><\/em> article said, \u201cOne needs look no further than today\u2019s headlines to see the global issues available to present-day storytellers that weren\u2019t there even 20 years ago.\u201d A good case in point was the 2015 near-future thriller, Ghost Fleet<\/a><\/em> (by P.W. Singer and August Cole) about the vulnerability of a U.S. military dependent on communication technologies\u2014like GPS and wireless\u2014and compromised by the computer chips that make them possible.<\/p>\n

Recent popular espionage thrillers illustrate how diverse the threats are: Terry Hayes\u2019s I Am Pilgrim<\/em>, involves deadly biological warfare; cyberespionage in David Ignatius\u2019s The Director<\/a><\/em>; Close Call<\/em> by Stella Rimington (first female director general of MI5) covers counterterrorism; and the agents in Todd Moss\u2019s Minute Zero<\/a><\/em> face political instability in Africa.<\/p>\n

Books like these turn reading and watching the daily news into a quest for the story beneath the story.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 Great minds . . . Dawn Ius wrote about this same trend in The Big Thrill magazine<\/a>, 1\/31\/16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some readers may long for the (fictional) days of the Cold War\u2014a nostalgia fueled by the brilliant movie Bridge of Spies\u2014and the dark-soul novels of John LeCarr\u00e9 and Graham Greene. At least then, we knew who the enemies were. After … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The 21st Century Spy Novel - still a quest for the story beneath the story","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[193,40,174,186],"tags":[415,129],"class_list":["post-5235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-espionage","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-technology","tag-thriller","tag-wars-and-conflicts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1mr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5235"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5256,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235\/revisions\/5256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}