[Adept Havelock]

Just finished S.M. Stirling's "The Domination". Disturbing piece of fiction, that.

It's a what-if, with a "point of departure" from our timeline around the time of the American Revolution. Rather fanciful, but a very good analysis of "can absolute evil exist".

One hell of a dystopia....Basically, in the Domination of the Draka (named for Sir Francis Drake) (a rival to the US) there are two classes. Citizens, and serfs (read slaves). They have one long term goal..to put the rest of humanity "Under the Yoke". It's the kind of place that embraced Nietzche and the ideals of "Will to Power".

Stirling may actually have invented a state worse than Orwell's, if considerably less plausible.

I preferred his "Emberverse" series that starts with "Dies the Fire", where on one day in March 1998, all High-density energy technologies (I.E. gas and steam engines, electricity, even gunpowder and explosives) suddenly stop working. Things get very very grim, very fast. That said, I found it a fun read.