This collision of sci-fi and religion offers a nuanced, if dense, examination of the story of mankind.
From debut author Rasch comes a sci-fi novel about a young man’s journey back in time and its subsequent impact on humanity.
In the distant future, Elijah, a member of the Centurion race, is a young man with great curiosity about his surroundings. Fortunately for him, his father, Aligious, isn’t one to skimp on explanations. After they discuss such topics as the finer points of wormholes (“They are a means of travel between two points of time and location, connecting and linking all that you see here in the galaxy”) and the intricacies of a game called Zobzball, Elijah and his father travel back in time through a complicated process. Their destination: the Earth’s moon, some billions of years in the past. During the journey, Aligious provides background information on the makeup of the human race, which has required the influence of outside forces to guide its evolution. According to Aligious, “the development of the planet Earth in its natural state over billions of years led to an under abundance of life (simple forms), and not intelligible communicative beings.” It has only been with the help of alien races that humanity has evolved, he explains, and so it’s managed to become “a less aggressive species.” What, though, does this all mean for Elijah? He becomes the prophet Elijah of biblical times, and his quest includes such miracles as raising the dead. As he runs “his own probability programs,” he investigates life even more deeply. This novel is full of technical jargon, and some portions prove to be particularly dense, as when Elijah asks his father to explain a finer point of engineering: “How is the bough distributaries constructed from within the confines of this underground enormous Herculean?” Some readers may feel lost, if not despondent, as Elijah delves into “quantum physics algorithms while simultaneously running data searches.” Nevertheless, the book is adept at exploring events of the past from the point of view of a highly advanced being, and it sheds new light on religious and historical events. Readers undeterred by detailed descriptions of technological advancements will uncover a starkly ambitious tale.
This collision of sci-fi and religion offers a nuanced, if dense, examination of the story of mankind.Pub Date: July 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5049-0435-3
Page Count: 258
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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