Subject: Review: _Mysterium_ by Robert Charles Wilson

From: [email-masked] (Michael Lichter)
Date: Mon, 30 May 1994 10:20:53 GMT

In 1989, a strange green stone is found at an archaeological dig in
Turkey.  Its composition and origins defy analysis.  Some time later, a
government laboratory is built near Two Rivers, a small, isolated
Michigan town.  One night, strange lights fill the sky, and the next
morning the residents of Two Rivers find themselves in a very different
world than the one they had known the day before.  Slowly, the
residents find that they haven't moved geographically, but have instead
slipped into an alternate universe, one where the political entity
called the United States of America never existed, and where much of
what we call North America is ruled by a brutal and racist Christian
theocracy.

The key players from Two Rivers include high school teacher Dexter
Graham, an intellectual, a rugged individualist and a man with a past;
Howard Poole, young physicist and nephew of the great cosmologist Alan
Stern; Clifford Stockton, an adventurous kid with a bicycle; and Evelyn
Woodward, Dex's some-time lover.  The New World contributes Lt.
Demarch, the man in charge of overseeing the control and exploitation
of this strange new community; Linneth Stone, an ex-pagan ethnologist
who befriends Graham; and Censeur Bisonette, a religious autocrat
involved in the plan to develop an atomic bomb to use in an ongoing war
against Spain.

While much of the book concerns the sociology of two universes in
collision -- the efforts of people to understand and adjust to huge
disruptions in their worlds -- at the core are Dex and Howard's
attempts to discover what has happened to them.  Their intellectual
journey brings them to the "*mysterium tremendae*, the outer limit of
rational thought" whence the book's title.

_Mysterium_ is Robert Charles Wilson's seventh novel, and in my opinion
his best since _Gypsies_ (1989), to which it is akin in its exploration
of alternate universes.  With its reliance on Christian Gnostic
cosmology (which is only sketchily explicated), _Mysterium_ also
recalls Philip K. Dick's _VALIS_.

In structure, _Mysterium_ resembles a 70's disaster movie or a
TV-miniseries; it has a large stock of characters and situations and
the book develops through individual development of the many threads
and their eventual interweaving.  In this structure, and in the focus
on an independent and individualistic man -- Dex -- _Mysterium_
resembles Wilson's disappointing _The Harvest_ (1993) and most of his
earlier novels.  As with too many SF novels, the female characters are
secondary and mostly passive.  Linneth, an extraordinary woman in her
world, is definitely underexploited by Wilson.

Wilson's prose is, as always, spare, tightly controlled and
transparent.  The biggest flaws in his storytelling in his earlier
novels have been a tendency towards excessive distance from his
characters, and a habit of building to sudden and unsatisfactory
resolutions.  Fortunately, neither are significant problems with this
book.

Overall, _Mysterium_ is a compelling story with a set of eternal
questions at its heart.  It has action, mystery, romance, and an
optimistic humanist sensibility.  It's a good read, and I recommend it
highly.

%A Robert Charles Wilson
%T Mysterium
%I Bantam Spectra
%C New York
%D 1994
%G ISBN 0-553-37365-X
%O $11.95
%P 276 pp
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//  Michael Lichter                                                          //
//  UCLA Department of Sociology             [email-masked]   //
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