3 March, 2002: Camp Concentration
Camp Concentration is probably Thomas Disch's best known book; it was one of the grand sensations of 1960s s.f., but is perhaps less remembered today, its central plot point (that the United States is going to be engaged in a war in Central America and conscientious objectors will be locked up) having been unfashionable (and unlikely) since America pulled out of Vietnam and ended the draft. The protagonist is Louis Sacchetti, a rather detatched observer: a man of no particular political conviction other than a scorn for the government, a lapsed Catholic, overweight, intellectual, ineffectual. Dumped from the regular prison he inhabits into Camp Archimedes, a secret government research facility. He has been brought there at the request of Mordecai Washington, a prisoner-cum-eperimental subject, who knew Sacchetti vaguely in high school and was impressed by Sacchetti's intelligence (and his outspoken atheism, of which Sacchetti has now repented). Camp Archimedes is an experiment in increasing the intelligence of soldiers (the "Camp Concentration" of the title), and Mordecai wants someone to translate between the subjects and the wardens.