PSI/Net - Hardcover

Williams, Billy Dee; MacGregor, Rob

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312867662 ISBN 13: 9780312867669

Publisher: Tor Books, 1999

Synopsis

On November 12, 1995 the CIA issued a report admitting that military and intelligence services had used psychics for spying or "remote viewing". Project Stargate, as it was called, is the premise of this nerve-jangling thriller.

Former Air Force Major Trent Calloway just wants to forget about his past, especially the tragedy that changed his life when he was involved in a government remote viewing project. With his marriage ruined in the aftermath of his psychic spying, he wanders the Southwest, occasionally guiding river rafting tours. And then suddenly his painful past returns and threatens to damage him again.

He finds out that he had been drugged during his remote viewing sessions and that the drug, now years later, is causing ever increasing side-effects in himself and the other government psychic spies he worked with - and that their psychic abilities are still expanding at frightening rates.

He realizes that the unknown drug he and the other psychic spies unwillingly took has bound them all together in a deadly psychic nexus, a "PSI net", that has trapped Callaway, who must now fight for his life and his sanity as he struggles for the security of the United States and its people.

About this title

About the Author

Billy Dee Williams is a renowned stage, television and film actor most noted for his roles in The Empire Strikes Backs, Return of the Jedi, and Lady Sings the Blues. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Rob MacGregor is the Edgar Award winning author of Prophecy Rock and many other novels. He lives in Boynton Beach, Florida

Reviews

First-novelist Williams (better known as a film actor) and coauthor MacGregor (Edgar Awardwinner for Prophecy Rock, a YA paperback) come up with a modest thriller based on the more restrained forms of parapsychology, a.k.a. PSI. A former member of a team of remote viewers (psychics hired to spy for the CIA), retired Major Trent Calloway now lives alone in an Airstream trailer and acts as a whitewater rafting guide in the Southwest. Trent finds himself being invaded by strange images, then is approached by his onetime sidekick in spying for the military, ``Doc'' Miriam Boyle, who tells him that they were secretly given a booster shot that increased their psychic abilities and tied the whole team into a PSI net. Now several other members of the old net have been herded together by their former CIA boss, Gordon Maxwell, who has himself been hired by renegade George Wiley, a right-wing nut hiding out from the police who wants several western states to secede from the Union. What's more, Wiley has sent his daughter Jill and teenager Matt Hennig off to Washington with a nuclear bomb in a backpack: theyre meant to blow up the White House, the president, and much of the capital. Meanwhile, President David Dustin has made a strange allusion in a recent speech to being visited by aliens. Has the president gone tabloidal and joined the alien abductee folks? His spokesperson, Calloways ex-wife Camila Hidalgo, tells reporters that Dustin spoke in metaphor. But then the president tells her to leak word to CNN that he really means it. How do space aliens tie in with nuking D.C., not to mention Wiley's plan to build Freedom Nation out of the seceding states? Stay tuned. The authors avoid over-the-top Men in Black special effects and try hard to keep their tale within the bounds of reasonthe premise is based on an actual government program, after allthough the developments are still pretty lurid. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Slim but briskly paced, this near-future thriller launches a new and promising collaboration between actorAand debut novelistAWilliams (best known for his role as Lando Calrissian in Return of the Jedi) and novelist MacGregor (Prophecy Rock, etc.). Their protagonist is Trent Calloway, a retired African-American Air Force major who is a survivor of a secret project to turn people capable of "remote-viewing" (i.e., psychics) into a military asset. Suspicious psychic phenomena make Calloway wonder if a new remote-viewing plan is in the worksAand indeed it is. His old project director, Gordon Maxwell, has entered into an alliance with a right-wing former general and his militia followers, and is trying to use remote viewing as a weapon to overthrow the U.S. government. They intend to plant a Russian-built suitcase-nuke in Washington, D.C., and to convince American president David Dustin that he has been contacted by UFOs. Calloway, his ex-wife and several other retired psychics (all bearing psychological scars from the first project) desperately race against time and terrorism to save the country. The story plays out tightly, with high excitement, and the authors do an excellent job not only in generating convincing characters but in making their bizarre scenario appear plausible. It hardly matters which author contributed what to the novel, as it should garner more than enough praise to spread around. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Once part of a secret government experiment in "remote viewing," Trent Calloway now finds himself linked involuntarily with the minds of other psychic spies. When he receives a premonition of danger involving a nuclear weapon and the Capitol, Calloway returns reluctantly to active duty, regardless of the cost. This collaborative effort by actor Williams and author MacGregor (Prophecy Rock) emphasizes fast-paced action and a race-against-time plot over characterization, making this an optional purchase for large sf collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312867662
• ISBN 13: 9780312867669
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256