FOREIGN BODIES

Science fiction outing for the author of the excellent mystery/fantasy The Art of Arrow Cutting (1997). By 2014, despite rising seas, a faltering economy, a bankrupt UN, and a Big Brother—ish US state, Australian Mike Galloway survives in San Francisco as a bucket-shop travel agent. One night he takes pity on Swiftie, the waiflike street person who sleeps on his balcony, and lets her in—and wakes up to find she’s swapped bodies with him! The man in Swiftie’s body is, it seems, from the future (only your mind can time-travel back, and it must occupy a conveniently flatlined but undamaged body when it arrives). Mike perforce has to take up life as Swiftie; she calls herself Tera and feigns memory loss. Then, after a brutal massacre of Asians by suspected white supremacists, Tera recognizes one of the perps. She helps the cops uncover a rapidly growing association of neo-Nazis, at least one of whom has knowledge of the future! Several whirling complications later, Tera—now Terri—learns that the neo-Nazi leader, Skye, was sent from the future to prevent a racist takeover of the western US. Now, insanely, he’s building a nuke and plans to blow them sky-high. Sexually charged but undisciplined: it might find some resonance among readers with gender-identity conflicts, but for the most part a splenetic, nonconstructive rant.