From the author of ILLEGAL ALIEN and FRAMESHIFT, more entertaining, thought-provoking, thoroughly modern SF. We gain access to the fourth dimension by deciphering an alien message and discover there the Overmind that links us all. Heather Davis, a psychologist, deciphers the alien message. She lives alone since her younger daughter, Rebecca, recently moved out. Her eldest child, Mary, killed herself a year ago. After that, she and her husband Kyle Graves, a researcher working on quantum computing, separated because neither of them could handle the grief, but they do not plan to stay apart forever. But they are driven further apart by Rebecca's sudden, astonishing accusation of child sexual abuse against her father, with the further unspoken but crystal clear accusation that he abused Mary as a child also and that Mary killed herself because of it. Though Heather tries not to, she gives the idea credence...When she breaks through to the fourth dimension and the Overmind, she is able to prove first to herself and then to her daughter Becky that Kyle is completely innocent: Becky, and Mary before her, are victims of the same psychologist, an abuse victim herself, who has planted false memories.
Thus the Overmind abolishes subjectivity and related error at a stroke. History moves beyond debate and falsehood. And even before Heather goes public with her discovery (after sharing it with her family), a wave of empathy washes through the world as the alien Overmind at last makes contact.
Industry Reviews
Messages-from-space yarn from the versatile author of Illegal Aliens (1997), etc. By 2017, messages from Alpha Centauri A have been arriving at Earth for ten years, but only the first few have been deciphered. Univ. of Toronto psychologist and message decipherer Heather Davis is separated from husband Kyle Graves, a leading quantum computer researcher; but then their daughter Becky accuses Kyle of abusing her. At first incredulous, Heather soon entertains horrid doubts. Poor Kyle, meanwhile, knows he's innocent - but, agonizingly, wonders whether he's repressing memories of abusing Becky (their other daughter, Mary, inexplicably committed suicide). Then the messages from space stop. Even though Kyle's attempt to demonstrate a working quantum computer fails, two mysterious groups - one offering megabucks and another message to decode, the other also offering megabucks while making veiled threats - want his work suppressed. He rejects both. Heather realizes that the Centanran messages, correctly arranged, form an unfolded four-dimensional hypercube. She builds a model that incorporates the substances specified in the previously decoded messages, climbs inside - and the thing folds her up into the fourth dimension! Not only that, but she's able to plug into humanity's collective unconscious, or overmind. Kyle, she learns, is indeed innocent, and Becky's the victim of an overzealous and suggestive therapist. Moreover, the Centaurans have sent a ship to make contact. Best of all, humanity's overmind meets the Centauran overmind with astonishing consequences. An intelligent and absorbing double-stranded narrative, generally well paced, accelerates to hyperspeed in the last few pages. (Kirkus Reviews)
