2008 books

[peteryoung]

70) Walter Mosley, The Wave, 2006
This is the most recent of Mosley's few science fiction novels – his first, Blue Light, drew high praise from just about everywhere. This, however, left me somewhat disppointed. Errol Porter, a washed-up Los Angeles man, gets strange phone calls from his long-dead father, who seems to have risen again but in a more youthful form: something ancient within the Earth is getting ready for a meeting with an extraterrestrial entity from space. The Wave is a very American science fiction novel: colourful, positive despite the occasional horrors, upbeat and full of the ethos of self-improvement. But Mosley seems to use all this as a smokescreen for too much reliance on personality stereotypes to make the characters convincing, and even with all the weird stuff going on the protagonist still gets to sleep with just about every woman around except his mother. Mosley can pull off some good dialogue and he plotted this story rather well, but like an average Trek episode it's all done in the cause of taking the reader almost exactly where he expects to end up.

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I didn't like Blue Light. It's the only Walter Mosley book I couldn't finish, and many I've read twice. I liked The Wave okay, but I like his writing quite a bit in general. I liked Futureland the best of his sf that I've read, although it was pretty bitter.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

My memory was that Blue Light drew lots of praise from lots of venues that knew nothing about sf. It was very weak.