Blue Light - Hardcover

Mosley, Walter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316570982 ISBN 13: 9780316570985

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 1998

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Reviews

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.

In the high 1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area, rays of blue light fall to earth. Any creature touched by them is evolutionarily catapulted to higher planes of understanding. The light kills most humbler critters that it strikes and plenty of humans, too. But a charismatic, womanizing hippie is transformed into the prophetic leader of the Close Congregation, which includes some fellow blue lighters, and a dying ex-con is revitalized as the Gray Man, capable of dismembering a person with his bare hands. The Gray Man sets out to eliminate good blue lighters, and by a third of the way through this yarn, he has offed the prophet. This is not curtains for the good guys, because grad-school dropout Chance has picked up the blue light's effects secondarily. Most of this dark fantasy, narrated by Chance (semi-omnisciently, because, like all blue lighters, he can learn of others' experiences by drinking their blood) is a chase, as the Gray Man inexorably carries out his mission. There is a showdown in which the Gray Man gets his, but, like Ishmael, Chance is the only apparent survivor, and he is committed to a state mental hospital, where he languishes to this day. Mystery writer Mosley should leave this kind of thing to Dean Koontz, and take it easy--Easy Rawlins, that is--again. Ray Olson

Noted for his mysteries featuring Easy Rawlins, Mosley changes course with a work that follows a large group of strangers touched by a mysterious blue light from space. "This is a great leap of faith for his fans, but those who make it will be rewarded with a beautifully written, deeply spiritual novel," said LJ's reviewer (LJ 10/1/98).
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316570982
• ISBN 13: 9780316570985
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304