Beyond Eden

This sequel to Desert Eden continues to peer beyond the end of the world as we know it, and the view is disappointingly bland. The earlier work introduced an interesting premise: in the near future a virus kills all but a handful of immune humans and the residents of a sealed, self-supporting biosphere in Texas. Now, only 20 years later, the ``Insiders'' and ``Outsiders'' largely ignore each other, and the Outsiders sound increasingly like a romanticized tribe of American Indians. Young Willow Gray Wolf, for instance, is called ``Spirit Woman, the voice of God in the land of the forsaken.'' Inside the sphere the older scientists are concerned about their own genetic survival, and their teenage offspring yearn for the wider pastures of the Texas desert. Meanwhile, over in North Africa, self-appointed demigod Zechar al Maghrib is collecting followers and will clearly cause trouble in an upcoming volume. Not only are Morgan's predictable teenagers and self-involved adults tedious, the author passes up the potential for tension between Insiders and Outsiders to follow these groups separately. (Apr.)