Very interesting parallel universe story. ( )

Wilson's novels generally foreground the concerns of ordinary people against some vast backdrop of space and time, a common SF move which Wilson does uncommonly well.

Two Rivers, a small town in Michigan, is zapped into a different timeline by experiments at a nearby government facility. Roads and power lines are cut off by trackless wilderness at the town's edge. Soon the town is occupied by the theocratic dictatorship that rules much of North America in the new timeline. The new world and ours seem to have diverged in the early Christian era; there, gnostic Christianity became the dominant religious strain. The town's new rulers, the Proctors of the Bureau de la Convenance Religieuse, find the ideas held by the residents of Two Rivers to be disturbingly heretical and in need of eradication. Their solution: books from the town's libraries have advanced the Bureau's nuclear-weapons program marvelously, and a test site for the new bomb will be needed. Meanwhile the timeline-jumping experiment is still active, covering the facility in a blue dome of deadly radiation.

Wilson's people include: Alan Stern, the genius physicist behind the experiment, who was on site and is presumed dead, Dexter Graham, a history teacher at the high school, Evelyn Woodward, a bed & breakfast operator, Howard Poole, the sole surviving scientist from the research facility, and Clifford Stockton, an inquisitive 12 year old. From the new world, Linneth Stone is a comparative ethnologist at Sethian College in Boston; she is drafted to help understand the very peculiar population that has turned up in the upper midwest. Lieutenant Demarch is the Proctor assigned the task of disposing of the town. The story brings out the interiority and complexity of each.

For the reader of alternate history, an obvious question arises. If the two worlds diverged in the second century CE, how can the Proctors speak versions of English and French comprehensible to the Two Rivers people? Wilson has an answer, relating to the process that led the town to this particular world.

A quick, thoughtful read. ( )

Il y a essentiellement deux sortes de science fiction : la futuriste et l'uchronique. Wilson appartient à la deuxième et plus précisément au genre du "[b:formidable événement|141244|Le Formidable événement|Maurice Leblanc|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172121706s/141244.jpg|136217]". Ici, l'explosion d'un artefact archéologique qui ne peut exister transplante un disque autour d'une petite ville américaine dans un autre monde. Un événement trop important pour qu'on puisse réparer et revenir en arrière. Donc il faut s'adapter, se cacher, combattre...

Mysterium marche plutôt bien. Ce nouveau monde issu d'un branchement de l'histoire il y a deux millénaires est plutôt intéressant. Bref, ce livre se laisse lire sans problème et éclaire différemment l'histoire de notre univers. ( )

Robert Charles Wilson's SF novels are based around scenarios where a fundamental aspect of reality is changed and charts the reactions of victims and observers to that change, whether that be the disappearance of an entire continent, or Earth being cutting off by a membrane causing the stars to disappear from sight. In this novel, following a bizarre accident at a secret research centre, an entire town in Michigan, Two Rivers, is transported to the equivalent spot and the same time in a parallel dimension where technology is more primitive, but a different form of Christianity holds sway, and women and racial minorities are oppressed - though these aspects are incidental to the plot and only mentioned briefly. In the end, having taken the town over to find out its advanced technological secrets, the authorities in the parallel world decide on a drastic solution to the anomaly that has arrived in their midst. There are a mixed bunch of characters on both sides, and new alliances form as the final fate of the town becomes clearer. A quick and mostly engaging read - there were a few info dumps, though less often than in Spin. ( )

Big idea story that was just a little too far out there ... too woo woo for the big idea. Several important elements of the story seemed underdeveloped. For me, the central mystery remains a mystery. A very interesting character story buried in here amongst the religious fascists. I liked that part of the book a lot and became invested in the characters. But a pall hangs over the entire book as it is clear that the nazi-like theocrats have a final solution planned.

I thought this was a new book when I bought it but it was a re-release of a 1994 novel. ( )