Mysterium
The residents of Two Rivers, Mich., wake up one morning to find themselves in a changed world. The entire town and the top-secret government research facility that was located near it have been blasted into a parallel world. Their own history has been erased and they are faced instead with a repressive government controlled by a powerful church that professes a version of Gnostic Christianity. The governing Proctors plunder the town for information, gaining the knowledge to build an atomic bomb; to prevent the contagion of ideas, Two Rivers is designated as the first test site. A few residents--history teacher Dex Graham, physicist Howard Poole, along with Linneth Stone, a cultural researcher sent from the outside to study these "aliens"--slowly piece together the events that brought them to this strange universe and begin to fight against the forces that now control them. The solution lies in a mysterious fragment found in a Middle Eastern desert that turns out to be part of a "wormhole boat," a device for traveling between parallel worlds that physicist Alan Stern came upon and piloted as he took the town of Two Rivers with him into a world that echoed his own obsessions. Wilson ( The Harvest ) blends science, religion, philosophy and alternate history into an intelligent, compelling work of fiction.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.