Standing Wave

In this mind-bending follow-up to Lightpaths, Hendrix sets existential philosophy on a collision course with quantum physics, presenting a 21st-century world in which the line between artificial intelligence and consciousness, between information and matter, has become so teased that the universe is about to have a space-time identity crisis. A host of characters are searching for a cyberspace murderer and seeking to understand recent mysterious cosmological occurrences. Hendrix extrapolates current social, political, and environmental conditions seamlessly into this future, but his discussions of scientific theory will many readers circling dangerously close to their own ""information density singularity."" Dialogue consists mainly of characters trying to explain the inexplicable: ""The noosphere is becoming involuted into what Teilhard called a Hyperpersonal Consciousness... Matter and consciousness will reach the terminal phase of their convergent integration and become one."" It also doesn't help that events and concepts are often explained long after initial references to them have befuddled readers. Still, Hendrix's postulation that ""Everything happens twice--first as theology, then as technology"" is compelling and worth the struggle to keep up with him. (Sept.)