GREEN RAY

In Heaton’s SF thriller, sinister forces converge on an environmentalist who holds the key to a teleportation technology with troubling side effects.

This novel, the second in a series, takes place in an alternative 2009, in which a groundbreaking United States president is in office—not Barack Obama, but another Black man, Jamal Williams, who is tasked with cleaning up the mess of an unnamed previous administration whose invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan collapsed the international banking system. With intel indicating that Saudi Arabia’s oilfields are secretly running dry, Williams is one of numerous players who approach the high-profile, well-heeled eco-activist Uma Jakobsdóttir. Readers of the previous installment of this series will recall that she is the daughter of the late physicist who developed revolutionary teleportation technology (called “LEAP”) meant to replace fossil fuel-dependent transportation. The new tech had a troubling, unforeseen side effect: LEAP portals, combined with supercomputers, can copy organic matter at the atomic level, allowing users—presumably rich and powerful ones—to make living backup clones of themselves, becoming functionally immortal. Fearing a nightmarish future of “ ‘[s]oulless creatures feeding off discarded atoms like vampires with no memory of their sins,’ ” Uma, six years earlier, attempted to discredit LEAP as a hoax perpetrated by an airline mogul. But President Williams and others have grasped the truth: It actually works. Uma is pressured by the White House to roll out LEAP to combat carbon emissions; in the shadows, liberated suicide-bomber fanatics from Gitmo, treacherous Deep State forces, and an assassination plot rachet the tension high and hold the reader rapt. The machinations and motivations here are a bit murkier than one might prefer, but the extrapolations of untested, paradigm-shifting technology keep the pages turning. An epilogue offers a tantalizing taste of the next installment.

Government skullduggery mixes thrillingly with SF invention and eco-concerns in this speculative tale.