Supersymmetry

If at first you don’t succeed, change the past. That lesson haunts this family drama turned world-saving exercise. As in Superposition, the Kelley family faces an invading quantum intelligence, the varcolac, which seeks to eliminate the messy multiplicity of humanity. Sisters Sandra and Alex (duplicates of an original Alessandra) attempt to decode their father’s cryptic mathematical clues and master the quantum technology that allows the varcolac access to our universe. They have two goals: defeat the alien, and keep from collapsing back into a single individual. Walton infuses humor (the end of the world “will make the lines shorter on Black Friday”) into his otherwise bleak look at the inevitability of humankind’s self-destruction. Meditations on identity link to the ethics of changing the past in ways that help convince the reader to accept a resolution involving a worrisome but unavoidable sacrifice. Agent: Eleanor Wood, Spectrum Literary Agency. (Sept.)