Walter Mosley is generally known for writing detective stories about strong, imperfect black men set in Los Angeles between the post-WWII years and the recent past. He’s also done a few science fiction novels, the latest being The Wave. Mosley’s a good writer, I’ve enjoyed a few of his Easy Rawlins books and I enjoyed this too.
The Wave is set in the present day and for a long time reads almost like a good writer’s effort to recapture a weird, hallucinogenic dream from the night after lying out in the sun too long and eating some spoiled fish. Errol Porter is getting strange phone calls in the middle of the night. Finally he meets his caller: a strapping healthy 20 year old who claims to be Errol’s father and knows things he couldn’t possibly know, but his father died nine years ago at 61 of cancer.
Instead, this man is a recreated shell, built off of Arthur’s DNA and memories by an Earthly lifeform older than anything we’ve ever encountered. The XTs are tiny things but are a group mind and built to share memories from generation to generation. Driven into the planetary core by a meteor a billion years ago they never developed a need for violence or to compete for resources with another species; they learned to listen to the universe and heard and answered the song of a far off entity. To meet the Farsinger they began a long, slow journey to the surface.
The American government became aware of the returned to life and assigned a team, led by a deranged military plastic surgeon, to investigate and neutralize the threat. The XTs enlisted Errol to help them understand humans but he was captured by the General. Stuff happens, the details are sort of irrelevant–though I will mention he doesn’t take unnecessary side trips and puts all of the 200 pages too good use in advancing the story and tension. What matters is that Mosley writes like few other science fiction authors and creates compelling characters and imagery.
recommended
BillSaysThis 