Making Light incisively dissects the link between homegrown terrorists and bad science fiction
Read it.
For fair and balanced coverage, remember that aQ allegedly can be translated as "foundation"...
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Ummm... why "allegedly"? It's polysemous of course, but qaeda does indeed mean "base, foundation, basis, groundwork". Or so say my Arabic-speaking acquaintances.
Oh, allegedly refers to what the equivalent conceptual image bin Laden had in mind when he founded it.
The Base and The Foundation are related but distinct concepts, and which is the proper transliteration depends on intent and actual implementation.
At some level it would be a lot scarier to know that bin Laden had a "Foundation" like concept for his organization, as opposed to ye olde consolidation of a Base.
In the science fictional context, of course.
Notice what this Castagana [corrected spelling] character has to say in defense of English: "English is the langauge [sic] of the United States of America- - our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution are written in the langauge [sic] that expresses our civilized freedoms ."
I love the sound of irony in the morning.
Bin Ladin evidently skipped over the many parts in Foundation where Salvor Hardin says, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." :-/
On the other hand, the Suliban in Star Trek: Enterprise (a series of which I saw maybe three episodes) were actually named after the Taliban, back before 11/9? I recall The Onion did a fantastic take on this, amidst a more general riffing on the Enterprise show — "Features shadowy, terroristic new enemy called the 'Suliban' and other fanciful imaginings from the farthest realms of science fiction".
On top of that, the terrorists in Charlie Stross's The Atrocity Archives were originally Al Qaeda operatives — Stross researched his background material before 11/9 and picked a plausible but at-the-time obscure terrorist group. . . .
I see a definite pattern forming here: those science-fiction writers, even the ones working for television, know more than they are letting on.