ur tale opens in the year 2031, at a moment of crisis that in most other novels would function as the climax. But here in Metzger's audacious book, the titanic events being depicted at the outset are merely the prelude. The Earth's sun, it seems, has spawned an artificial, focused Jet on one side, which seems clearly intended to propel the sun on some sort of journey. Meanwhile, from the surface of the Earth have sprouted two Rings, one band around the equator, one running perpendicular, north to south. These enormous structures, miles high, also feature propulsive units at intervals. It seems the Earth will be accompanying the sun wherever it goes. The agents behind these changes: utterly unknown. Chaos reigns. But then, suddenly, the solar Jet winks out and the Rings go dormant. The Earth's voyage has been mysteriously aborted. But billions have died, and human life will never be the same.
We jump forward 20 years. Now we will witness the continuation of these mighty forces through the eyes of several characters. Prof. Jesper Kristensen, who believes he can communicate with the operating system of the sun. Gen. Thomas Sutherland, who has a literal vision of the future that guides him in manipulating all the other players, including his own daughter, Sarah, who is about to become a living extension of the AI known as CUSP: Controllable Universal Sentient Plasma. Simon Ryan, a tortured soul who was engineered to become the first Posthuman—but who has failed in his assignment. Padmini Sunduram, a Philly cop with lethal enhancements and a curious mind. The Olmos family, Xavier and his brother Che, and Xavier's daughter, Christina. Seemingly simple farmers, how can they explain their access to advanced spying equipment buried deep below their farmhouse? The Swirl, an AI rival to the CUSP, born out of the cyberspace area known as the Void. And Adebisi Akandi, diplomat to the Chinese settlement on Mars, who finds himself kidnapped by a colony of dinosaurs living inside the artificial structure we call Phobos.
These players and others soon find that the makeshift society cobbled together over the last two decades cannot stand against new developments. The sun's Jet has come into being again; the Earth's Rings are triggering massive seismic shifts as they activate in turn; Sarah Sutherland, now integrated with CUSP, has gone into Singularity mode; the dinosaurs and their rivals have emerged from a 65-million-year hibernation and begun fighting; and Earth is accelerating toward Alpha Centauri, where the real puppetmasters await.
Destroying in order to create
Charles Harness famously explained the conceptual density of his classic novel Flight Into Yesterday (1953) by saying that he had simply put every idea he had had for a year into it, whether or not any of the ideas initially seemed to go together or not. The force of Harness' genius melded everything into an organic whole. Metzger's stunning opus radiates a similar vibe. This book is so overstuffed and recomplicated that it should, by all rules of logic and Aristotle, collapse of its own weight. But instead it soars. So much for what they teach at Clarion.
One of Metzger's strong suits is that he can make his big ideas both visually and intellectually comprehensible to the reader. He builds word pictures that convey the awesome events—suns colliding, planets shattering—vividly. His infodumps are incorporated gracefully into the action, and he generally goes over critical points at least twice, in separate contexts, to hammer them home. There is mystery here, but nothing ambiguous or foggy.
The cast of characters are all nicely individuated as well. They might not possess quite the depth of a protagonist conjured up by Benford or Bear, but they all function quite well in their roles. Moreover, Metzger has some fun with one of his bad guys, who, due to a long satisfying backstory, exactly resembles a young Bill Gates. Watching the evil genius of Microsoft threaten humanity with extinction is pretty darn rewarding. Sarah Sutherland, functioning in Posthuman mode for most of the novel, can by definition be only an enigma, but Metzger makes her an alluring one. She is often described in subtle goddess-like imagery, and Metzger scores points in the current competition in SF to make the Singularity comprehensible and utilize it as a trope without rendering narrative coherence null and void.
Religious overtones and subtexts in fact permeate this book. (One part of the Earth's journey amounts a wandering through the wilderness for exactly "40 days.") In fact, this kind of tale, exemplified in the past by folks like Roger MacBride Allan, John Stith, the aforementioned Bear and Benford, and even on a lesser scale by John Barnes' Mother of Storms (1994), might be called "eschaton SF." Serving as a kind of secular counterpart to books like the Left Behind series, these novels promise us that anyone smart or stubborn or lucky enough to survive (not necessarily holy enough) will reach—if not exactly paradise—then at least a safe harbor among the stars.
