The human race has just begun. In the Bay Area in the mid-1960s, several people are struck by a cosmic blue light that "quickens" their DNA, causing them instantaneously to evolve far beyond the present state of the human race. They become the full actualization of humankind, with strengths, understandings & communication abilities that exceed our imagining. Blue Light is the story of this quickening, & the conflict between these precursors of a new race of humans & the old breed they seem destined to supplant. Unfolding from the point of view of Chance, a half-black, half-white lost soul who becomes a follower of the "blues," the novel traces battles among those struck by the light (including one who becomes the living embodiment of Death) & their quest to bring their message of evolution & higher purpose to the rest of the world. Blue Light explores some of the questions about race, identity, & humanity that are the hallmark of the author's other best-selling fiction, but his mind-stretching new approach will take his readers to a fascinating place they've never traveled.
Amazon.com Review
Despite the success of his color-coded Easy Rawlins series, Walter Mosley dares, with Blue Light, to go where few mystery writers have gone before. The novel is pure (if not simple) science fiction, less evocative of Philip Marlow than Philip K. Dick. It begins during the 1960s, when flashes of extraterrestrial blue light enter the bodies of several Northern Californians. Those struck by the flashes immediately take on superhuman abilities. Mosley's narrator, Chance, is not himself a recipient of the heaven-sent beams, but after a blood transfusion from the leader of the Blues, his consciousness expands. The biracial, suicidal Thucydides scholar becomes a supernal historian of his new, blue-inflected peer group. He dreams of a "far-flung future, when science is not estranged from the soul" and where human beings will see the world with the purified vision of his enlightened brethren. Still, he is powerless in the face of the Gray Man--a vicious incarnation of evil who seems intent on wiping out the entire Blue population. Somber and violent, bizarre and oddly reverent, Blue Light marks a promising new direction for Mosley. What's more, the dangling threads at the end intimate a vast epic to come (Mosley has suggested that a trilogy awaits) and a literary challenge that's anything but Easy. --Patrick O'Kelley
From Publishers Weekly
You have to admire Mosley: with a gilt-edged brand-name character (Easy Rawlins)in his locker, he still can't resist venturing off in new directions. Sometimes his effort to break new ground works beautifully, as in RL's Dream; sometimes it's an interesting misfire, as in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned.This time, however, it seems plain misguided. Blue Light is an odd mixture of science fiction and inspirational fable about a sort of cosmic ray that enters into a handful of people, giving them superhuman faculties, and the struggle some of these ultra-evolved folk have with the spirit of Death, who has also been granted special powers. Beginning in Berkeley during the hippie love days (well observed, as Mosley's West Coast scenes always are) and eventually migrating into the deep forests of the Sierra, where a group of "blues" create a sort of idyllic pastoral retreat, the story is mostly told from the viewpoint of Chance, a half-breed drifter. One of its more original aspects is that several of the characters, enacting roles similar to those often given by other writers to Native American shamans and seers, are black. There are some jolting scenes of sexuality and violence, and some arresting images, like the vocalizing trees experienced by the "blues"; but the biology is insufficiently imagined, the time sequence is sometimes confusing and a sort of vague poesy that is a far cry from Mosley's typically sinewy prose is the predominant style. Time-Warner audio; author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
The human race has just begun. In the Bay Area in the mid-1960s, several people are struck by a cosmic blue light that "quickens" their DNA, causing them instantaneously to evolve far beyond the present state of the human race. They become the full actualization of humankind, with strengths, understandings & communication abilities that exceed our imagining. Blue Light is the story of this quickening, & the conflict between these precursors of a new race of humans & the old breed they seem destined to supplant. Unfolding from the point of view of Chance, a half-black, half-white lost soul who becomes a follower of the "blues," the novel traces battles among those struck by the light (including one who becomes the living embodiment of Death) & their quest to bring their message of evolution & higher purpose to the rest of the world. Blue Light explores some of the questions about race, identity, & humanity that are the hallmark of the author's other best-selling fiction, but his mind-stretching new approach will take his readers to a fascinating place they've never traveled.
Amazon.com Review
Despite the success of his color-coded Easy Rawlins series, Walter Mosley dares, with Blue Light, to go where few mystery writers have gone before. The novel is pure (if not simple) science fiction, less evocative of Philip Marlow than Philip K. Dick. It begins during the 1960s, when flashes of extraterrestrial blue light enter the bodies of several Northern Californians. Those struck by the flashes immediately take on superhuman abilities. Mosley's narrator, Chance, is not himself a recipient of the heaven-sent beams, but after a blood transfusion from the leader of the Blues, his consciousness expands. The biracial, suicidal Thucydides scholar becomes a supernal historian of his new, blue-inflected peer group. He dreams of a "far-flung future, when science is not estranged from the soul" and where human beings will see the world with the purified vision of his enlightened brethren. Still, he is powerless in the face of the Gray Man--a vicious incarnation of evil who seems intent on wiping out the entire Blue population. Somber and violent, bizarre and oddly reverent, Blue Light marks a promising new direction for Mosley. What's more, the dangling threads at the end intimate a vast epic to come (Mosley has suggested that a trilogy awaits) and a literary challenge that's anything but Easy. --Patrick O'Kelley
From Publishers Weekly
You have to admire Mosley: with a gilt-edged brand-name character (Easy Rawlins)in his locker, he still can't resist venturing off in new directions. Sometimes his effort to break new ground works beautifully, as in RL's Dream; sometimes it's an interesting misfire, as in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned.This time, however, it seems plain misguided. Blue Light is an odd mixture of science fiction and inspirational fable about a sort of cosmic ray that enters into a handful of people, giving them superhuman faculties, and the struggle some of these ultra-evolved folk have with the spirit of Death, who has also been granted special powers. Beginning in Berkeley during the hippie love days (well observed, as Mosley's West Coast scenes always are) and eventually migrating into the deep forests of the Sierra, where a group of "blues" create a sort of idyllic pastoral retreat, the story is mostly told from the viewpoint of Chance, a half-breed drifter. One of its more original aspects is that several of the characters, enacting roles similar to those often given by other writers to Native American shamans and seers, are black. There are some jolting scenes of sexuality and violence, and some arresting images, like the vocalizing trees experienced by the "blues"; but the biology is insufficiently imagined, the time sequence is sometimes confusing and a sort of vague poesy that is a far cry from Mosley's typically sinewy prose is the predominant style. Time-Warner audio; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.