Love Machine

February 11, 2013
The unevenness of Mosley’s Crosstown to Oblivion series continues in the third pair of unconvincing novellas (after Merge/Disciple). “Stepping Stone” is the more compelling piece, relating the experiences of Truman Pope, a man who overcame learning disabilities with the help of a sympathetic teacher and who has labored for years as mailroom supervisor for a Manhattan financial firm. Pope has settled into a staid routine that comes to an abrupt halt when he sees a woman in the elevator whom no one else can see. The vision proves to be the first of a series of odd episodes that lead to an apocalyptic threat to mankind. “Love Machine” starts more strongly then it finishes, with the development of a device that allows people to share sensory experiences. There are flashes of Mosley’s lyrical gifts (“Slowly the night turned into another kind of darkness and the dreams settled into dust upon a vast, unseen desert floor”), but not enough. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins Loomis.

March 1, 2013
The creator of Easy Rawlins, whose ambition keeps sending him back to apocalyptic sci-fi scenarios with decidedly mixed results (The Wave, 2006, etc.), presents a pair of visionary novellas mainly designed to provide their characters with occasions to hector each other and the gentle reader with speechifying. Stepping Stone, the more interesting of these two tales, begins in quotidian reality before taking leave of it. Truman Pope, long ago identified as suffering from a learning disability, finds his uneventful tenure as mailroom manager at the firm of Higgenbothem, Brightend and Hoad disrupted by the apparition of a young woman in an ecru pantsuit whom nobody else can see. Minerva, as she calls herself, opens Truman's eyes to soaring new vistas, including the good news (Truman is God) and the bad (the coming of "the worst plague in the history of the human race"), before the millennial conclusion. Love Machine begins more forthrightly with technobureaucrat Lois Kim testing the Datascriber, which top neurophysicist Dr. Marchant Lewis has produced for her bosses at InterCybernetics International, and then realizing that she's given Lewis access to her memories and desires and opened herself in turn to the Co-Mind Lewis shares with Marie, a former employee he once threw across the workspace and lamed, and three other associates, one of whom, doubling as a coyote, chides her: "[Y]ou are still thinking as one person who is alone in the cold embrace of uncaring, inert matter." After some initial resistance, Lois quickly adjusts to her new status and prepares to forge her comrades into the new vanguard of humanity. Mosley, whose mystery novels (All I Did Was Shoot My Man, 2012, etc.) have won deserved acclaim, is here at his most declamatory, essayistic and oracular.

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March 1, 2013

The prolific Mosley, who made his name with mysteries, has also written science fiction, a graphic novel, and film scripts. This is the third installment in his visionary flipbook series. Like the previous two titles (The Gift of Fire/The Head of a Pin; Merge/Disciple), it combines sf elements with an apocalyptic view of planet Earth. In Stepping Stone, a man everyone assumes is retarded sees a woman whom no one else can see. By the end of the story, he's leading a rearguard action against a race of "intergalactic social spiders." In Love Machine, a woman submits to a cyberexperiment that results in her joining a "Co-mind." Mosley's strength has always been getting readers inside the skins of people different from themselves, but that element is unfortunately missing in these overheated semiparables. They're abstract, hyperbolic, and padded with cliches and fuzzy language. VERDICT This double book will probably sell because Mosley has many admirers, but it's not very good.--David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2013
Mosley's Crosstown to Oblivion series (each volume of which features two short novels packaged back-to-back in the manner of the old Ace Doubles) continues with this third installment. In Love Machine, a scientist has created a device that allows human minds to share thoughts and emotions. The scientist dreams of a collective human mind shared by all of humanity, but is he a groundbreaking researcher, an evil genius, or a self-appointed god? In Stepping Stone, a man begins to imagine that he's encountering a mysterious woman only he can see. Slowly his life begins to changehis dreams taking him to other places, his nightmares showing him real eventsand eventually he discovers that he might be humanity's savior, but also its destroyer. Both stories are well written and imaginative, although Stepping Stone is a bit stronger, thanks to its compelling first-person narration. Astute readers will see where the plots are going early on (even the series title is a giveaway), but, even so, there is plenty hereboth style and storyto satisfy readers of speculative fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)