From the publisher:
“There is a Hindu belief that when humanity slides into decay, threatening us all with a return to barbarism, God comes among us as human, to jump-start us.
Two thousand years ago the Roman Empire ruled western civilization. It improved engineering, administration, even the law, and provided relative peace. But it was not only powerful; it was corrupt, brutal, and greedy. Thus the Infinite Soul incarnated among a Semitic people suited by location and monotheism to the needs of humankind and its future.
Now, two thousand years later, we're ripe for a second coming. But this is the media age...and the time of the terrorist. Thus instead of a Nazarene carpenter, the vessel of the Infinite Soul is a black Canadian cybernetics genius. And instead of fishermen, shepherds and laborers, he surrounds himself with management mavens, media consultants, and security specialists...
And unavoidably enemies, because what he says is not what the zealots want to hear. For we are not born to escape, but to evolve, by taking responsibility for our condition.
This is not a harsh story, despite conspiracies, hatred and violence. It is rich in characters, beautiful and ugly, described with compassion and humor. It is largely through them that Dalmas tells this story of love, reluctance, anger...and the Infinite Soul.”
This is not the usual type of Science Fiction I like; my more preferred style is space ships, exotic women, time travel and BEM either friendly or unfriendly.
This book certainly does not fit that mode. Yes, it does take place in the not too distant future, but it does not have most of the standard Sci Fi entrapping I prefer. No flying cars, no matter transmitters, no death ray weapons.
In fact, this book read more like a modern day discourse on religion and its effects on the human race, juxtaposed with the real ideas of what God is supposed to stand for, then compared with each other.
But don’t get the idea for a second that this book is dry, without humor or that it is anything but Science Fiction at its very heart. It is all of the above and more.
I ‘grokked’ it, so to speak. And much like that earlier Science Fiction Messiah, John Dalmas’s character Ngunda Elija Aran is also a character often misunderstood, feared and hated. Unlike Heinlein’s character, however, this one might actually be able to prove who he is.
Aran is a major player in the world of finance, philanthropy and Self Help. He writes a column on various problems that strike the human spirit and heart, and leads a small group in his efforts to make the world a better place.
From their headquarters in Colorado, the Millennium group sponsors therapy groups and encounter groups known as Ladder Programs, designed to teach others to teach others about the true way.
Protected and aided by Lor Lu who may or may not be the reincarnated friend of a Native American who works for Aran, and his chief of security Art Knowles, he heads the self help and educational programs that seem to be the only real ray of hope for a world almost mad.
Now, if this sounds a bit ‘cultish’ to you, the reader, don’t worry. Apparently many of the people in this future world also believe it to be a cult. And they also think of Aran as a ‘Guru’ or at worst a con man out to deceive and hurt the very people who follow him.
And Aran’s message is not one that many people want to hear, especially those in organized religion.
Many look at aran as the new Messiah. Which creates a problem in some ways since he is black. Which is never really a discussion point in the book at all, until it comes into play in a non-written manner near the end of the book. In fact, the allusion is more suggested then stated.
Into the whole thing is dropped Lee Shoreff, who along with her husband Ben and daughters Rebecca and Raquel, have moved out to the ranch to work for Millennium. Lee at first does not want to take a job with a ‘cult’ and worries about the influence the staff will have on her daughters.
Lee is mostly an agnostic when forced to deal with Aran’s claims, but Ben and the two girls soon become believers and followers of the ‘guru’. But, like Doubting Thomas, Lee will be forced to reach out and touch the essence of the physical and spiritual before coming to an honest conclusion about what is happening around her.
Dalmas has said that he drew most of the philosophy of Millennium from Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's "Michael books," the Bible and philosophers from Jacques Barzun to Yogananda. Using a mixed blend of Eastern and Western ideologies, Aran demonstrates the ability to heal others and levitate himself while still offering love, rebirth and redemption to a world stifled in recession, crime and even more intolerance then we have today. And to an America where jobs are scarce and the workweek has been cut to less then 30 hours for full time employees. With a rise in terrorism and a 25 percent United States unemployment level, fighting the consequent civil unrest and the failure of many of the worlds political and social systems it looks like a bleak future.
Yes, there is some good news. First, sexual equality seems a bit more equal, since the current President is a woman Florence Metzger. In fact, Florence is a Black Woman (Sounds of shock from the reading audience), but her mother is Samoan.
Aran faces a multitude of enemies, much like Heinlein’s and the earlier Messiah of Semitic origin, and has to deal with assassination attempts by various groups ranging from a Militia killer named Lute Koskela to IRA murderer Thomas Corkery to a Jewish group forced to flee the middle east after a limited Nuclear exchange and the possibility of betrayal.
But, Aran keeps trying to tell the world that he is not Christ reborn, but instead expects the arrival into his body of what he calls the "Infinite Soul" which is based on the Hindu belief mentioned above.
He also foretells of a massive natural disaster, which will show both the power of this Infinite Soul and will force the human race to take that next step up the spiritual ladder of development.
As Aran travels across the U.S. healing and speaking an unlikely entourage of followers follows him, from his own disciples to the media to killers from all walks of life. Too bad for the assassin’s, as one after another attempt is stopped, often by weird and unexplainable circumstances and in some cases even resulting in the deaths of the murderers when more then one is sent to kill him
Not a good job, killing Messiah’s. Look what happened to Rome.
He is a media magnet, pulling the cameras toward him as they travel across the nation.
Leaving people healed of cancer, of blindness, of prostate trouble to simple emotional pain in his wake, Aran begins to become more and more like the Messiah people have hoped for. But, his moment of martyrdom is also closing in, as is the natural disaster he has warned them must come.
Blending together Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in A Strange Land with a plausible philosophy of spiritual meaning of life is a difficult task, but Dalmas did it and did it in a way I don’t think I ever expected. From page one to the very end, I never expected the book or the story to come together the way it did, or to have the impact on me that it did.
The mixture of philosophy, catastrophe, theology, terrorism and politics fused together life a symphony. It was just brilliant; it is one thing to make a messiah, it is quite another to make him someone you would want to follow (even with the perceived guilt of my own Judeo-Christian consciousness).
This was nothing short of an amazing story. While this cliché is often overused, I honestly could not put it down. I lay down to go to bed and picked it up to let me mind relax for a bit. The next thing I knew it was two hours later, near midnight, and I was saying “Just another few pages”. Then it was 12:50 a.m. and I was saying just ten more minutes.
This went on until just about 3:30 a.m. when I closed the book on the last page. I was like a fiend. I just had to see what happened next.
Man, I like that in a book.
A Slight Spoiler. Do not read if you don’t want to know what happens.
My problem with the whole unwritten black problem of Aran? Simple. Why did they have to kill the “BLACK” Messiah in Little Rock? Why in the South at all? Why not Utah? Or Chicago? The Howard Beach section of Queens, New York? Or even Oakland, Ca?
Yes, you would have to be a thin-skinned Southern Boy who had to listen to all the accusations of racism when you left the South and begin to travel around the country to understand the frustration I felt at that scene, but one gets so tired of trying to explain to people that the South is no longer the only place in America where the heartbeat of intolerance beats.