CORPORATE MESSIAH

In Spadoni’s debut novel, a successful businessman reveals himself as a man from the future and lays out a new outlook on science and strategies to save the human race from ruin.

In the tradition of Og Mandino and Dan Millman, Spadoni uses a fantasy narrative to put across a revised concept of life, the universe and everything—and the business acumen required to make the most of it. The book’s subtitle, “The Fundamental Nature of the Universe,” is daunting, but the book itself is quite slender. Protagonist and lecturer Miles Manta, a San Francisco entrepreneur with the proverbial golden touch, has founded the Trek Group, a regular brainstorming meeting for outstanding CEOs. At their latest conclave, Miles drops a bombshell: He’s come to the realization that he’s actually a man from the future, perhaps as much as four centuries hence. This epiphany, he says, came about gradually, based on his anomalous recallof events and social changes yet to happen. He proves his power by predicting an atomic holocaust in Afghanistan, hours before it transpires. Later, he mounts a presentation over a series of meetings. He says that part of the reason that human progress went askew is because the scientific establishment adopted some badly flawed fundamental theories of reality, chiefly Einstein’s: The dreaded, fusion-based H-bomb is, in fact, unworkable, a propaganda hoax. In truth, he says, the universe operates on a “Spirogrid” system of Newtonian motion that dispenses with quantum physics. As a result, a vastly powerful, inexpensive energy technology awaits discovery, which will bring about a better tomorrow. This dense, earnest novel includes Manta’s “handouts,”which try to make a real-life case for this cosmology and require some knowledge of calculus to fully comprehend. Readers of a Libertarian or neoconservative bent may wish that the book had more strongly emphasized how free enterprise can implement Manta’s miracles, as it paints governments as impotent, partisan bureaucracies.There’s also a strong Christian component to the story, mostly shoehorned into one chapter on Manta’s home life, which contains creationism arguments and Bible citations. However, the author recommends up front that atheists and agnostics skip that chapter altogether—a rather magnanimous statement in this era of profitable, evangelical end-times literature.

An ambitious, complex rewrite of the ground rules of science and religion.