he year of this novel's action is roughly 2015, and it's a year that finds the world in terrible straits. A global depression—the Hard Times—has rendered nations impotent to help their citizens attain the most basic necessities of life. Even the once-wealthy United States—led by its female president, Florence Metzger—is suffering from 25 percent unemployment and consequent civil unrest. Political and social systems are failing left and right. A corresponding rise in terrorism to achieve the mutually antagonistic goals of various groups has made daily life a risky gantlet of abrupt mortality.
In this grim scene, there is only one beacon of hope: the Millennium movement, led by the charismatic guru Ngunda Elija Aran, a black man of mixed parentage. Aran's HQ is a small but flourishing outpost in the Colorado wilderness, but he has agents and outreach centers around the globe. Surrounded by trusted assistants such as a young Asian man named Lor Lu and a security chief named Art Knowles, Aran manages various self-help programs, conducts a public educational and lecture campaign explicating his radical theology and philosophy and meanwhile plans extensively for a day of tribulations that will soon arrive.
Into this enclave comes Lee Shoreff, with husband Ben and daughters Rebecca and Raquel. Lee and Ben have been hired by Millennium as professional administrators. Lee is an agnostic when it comes to Aran's claims, while Ben and the girls are potential believers. But the strange experiences Lee is reluctantly about to undergo will soon have her moving intellectually and emotionally into her husband's camp. Aran begins miraculously to heal people on tour, while his aide Lor Lu exhibits precognition and clairvoyance, among other talents. Multiple assassination attempts against the preacher—by an Aryan killer named Lute Koskela, a pro-Catholic murderer named Thomas Corkery and a radical Jewish group led by Moishe Baran—fail through what seems to be divine intervention. Before too long, Lee is tapped to go out on the road, embarking on what will prove to be Aran's final tour, when all his prophecies—and Lee's courage and strength—will be tested to their limits.
Partying at a hopeful apocalypse
John Dalmas manages to blend theology, philosophy, global catastrophe and hard-nosed politics into a rewarding novel that reads a little bit like Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) combined with Algis Budry's False Night (1954) and Wylie and Balmer's When Worlds Collide (1933). His writing style is blunt and direct, a lesser version of William Barton's tempered prose, but Dalmas nonetheless succeeds at creating likable characters and vivid action. His plotting skills are sharp as well. Sometimes Dalmas will over-explain (I think most readers will understand the derivation of the slang phrase "Big Mama" without Dalmas' redundant footnote), but on the whole he is economical with his action.
One of the most intriguing things about this book is Aran's philosophy of the universe, which is clearly and sufficiently depicted. To conjure up a messiah is one thing, but to supply him with a coherent program is another entirely. Dalmas explains in an afterword that he worked particularly hard on this aspect of the book right from the start, and his care shows. For the SF reader, Aran's philosophy will resonate at points with the infamous Scientological beliefs of L. Ron Hubbard. Amazingly, Dalmas makes us accept the sanity and likelihood of Aran's version of becoming a "clear" by working out the karma of past lives. That he is able to more or less rehabilitate this much-derided religion is perhaps the most amazing thing about the book. Unlike so many apocalyptic tales where the Messiah proves a false and self-serving ego-tripper, Dalmas' protagonist is the real thing—at least in the context of the book—and this turnabout of cliche is stimulating.
Switching point of view among a host of characters—including the villains—Dalmas relies on the Shoreff family as his anchor amid the chaos of events. Lee's gradual swing to belief in Aran is well played, and the strange maturation of the two Shoreff kids under the teachings of the "Millis" is pleasantly spooky in a kind of Henry Kuttner manner. This volume, merely book one of a series, promises plenty of action and suspense ahead.
