HOW LIKE A GOD

Virginia computer programmer Rob Lewis, a devoted house-and- family man, wakes one morning having acquired the power not only to read minds but also to influence them. At first he uses the power playfully, covering absences at work, helping his wife Julianne up the corporate ladder. But Rob's toddler twins, Davey and Angela, soon begin to talk and reason like tiny adults: Evidently the power leaks out from under their father's conscious control. So Rob, terrified by the potential for evil, and facing the destruction of his children's lives, abandons his family and becomes a derelict on the streets of New York. Later, after an accidental meeting, microbiologist Edwin Barbarossa gives Rob hope that he could learn to control the unconscious operation of the power. Then Rob receives a psychic summons to an ancient archeological site in Uzbekistan. And here, unfortunately, science fiction collapses into crackpot fantasy. Rob's summoner is immortal Gilgamesh, the legendary king of ancient Uruk. Yep. He gave Rob the power. Why? Don't ask. Why, of all people, choose Rob? Just don't ask. An imaginative and sometimes intriguing yarn, best when it focuses on family or science, elsewhere increasingly erratic and implausible.