Wayne Dolan's life has become as empty and stale as his post-divorce, view-of-the-parking-lot apartment. His visions of life as an illuminati have turned to dust as his latest science fiction novels lie remaindered and unread; his ex-wife angrily shields his kids from their no-good father. He agrees to a dubious-sounding assignment--to write a semi-fictional book about a peculiar institute researching the scientific aspects of religion--because he has no better prospects.

At the institute, which is tucked away in corner of Michigan, Wayne learns that its motley assortment of scientists and crackpots has divided into two hostile camps based on belief in an afterlife. Wayne is bemused by the research projects under way: a hat for measuring religious brain waves; psychic tests involving recently dead subjects; a sensory deprivation tank for nirvana on demand. The institute's star scientist has identified a region of the brain that strives to assign "higher" meaning, and says our cognitive functioning would improve without it.

Although at first he's only looking for novel fodder among the quirky researchers, Wayne becomes intensely interested in their work and opinions as he starts experiencing strange dreams and visions of a green continent. Many of the visions feature an eerily beautiful woman or a serene Native American shaman who patiently explains the relationship between layers of reality.

Wayne is both entranced and alarmed as his fantasies intrude more and more into his waking life and are accompanied by increasingly uncharacteristic behavior--like falling in love with a bitter, beautiful crippled woman he meets in a Laundromat. Suddenly he learns that he himself is being experimented on by an unscrupulous scientist, and Wayne may meet his maker--or oblivion--before he can understand what's been happening to him and what it all means.

Ally McBeal meets God

Making the hero of an SF novel an SF novelist is pretty cheeky--it looks like a stab at reinforcing the story's realism through an unconscious association between narrator and author. Fortunately, Wayne Dolan is a compelling everyguy. His anxiety over his stagnant life, his perplexity and enchantment at the increasingly vivid dreams, and the conflicted joy he feels are powerful, visceral emotions that drive and develop him. And it turns out that his vocation is a gateway to his imagination and the fantasies that develop there.

So what about Nasir's other device--his suspense-dissipating, decide-for-yourself approach to what's "really" happening to Wayne? Those visions could be just a brain-chemical cocktail, or externally induced hallucinations, or a manifestation of another reality--and what does "reality" mean anyway? Nasir may be hedging, or he may be striving for a deeper truth: that there is no single understanding of humanity's relationship with the universe. There is one clue: Wayne's random encounter with the estranged daughter of the institute's most controversial scientist is either otherworldly intervention or pure plot contrivance.

Distance Haze is vibrantly written and generally fun to read, with cute moments like Wayne staring slack-jawed at the naked dancing women at the house down the road, or the dead Native American whose prerequisite to revelation is a $5,000 deposit in an account at the Farmers' Bank. Like Wayne's life, these light moments are mixed with material that's sober and occasionally disturbing.

Some people yearn for an Answer to the baffling nature of life on Earth, and expect novels about religion to furnish one. Nasir has prudently provided instead a collection of things to think about, couched in the interesting story of a man changed by strange experiences. Is it plausible? God only knows.