November 15, 2002
Besides sf novels and stories, Kube-McDowell has written, as an unhyphenated McDowell, some 500 nonfiction pieces on scientific and theoretical subjects, and by now he knows how stories are told and characters motivated and how scientists think, work, seek funds, and can suffer from arrogance and frustration when their world doesn't act scientifically--that is, he knows that scientists are human beings, not lifeless machines. Jonathon Briggs of Toronto, for instance, wants to use Elizabeth Froelich's SQUID computer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to study consciousness in the healthy mind. By swimming against the accepted tide of scientific thinking, he eventually nets himself a personal foundation to support his intellectual innovations. Unfortunately, the donor enabling the foundation also gives him a major headache in the form of her belief in reincarnation, which is at odds with his understanding of objective science. The gradually unfolding struggle between them, neatly wound into the story, forces the reader into accepting Briggs' entrepreneurial actions, aggressive search for scientific explanations, and ultimate suicide.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)