Blasphemy

October 22, 2007
Like Isabella, a giant “superconducting supercollider particle accelerator,” the thought-provoking new thriller from bestseller Preston (Tyrannosaur Canyon) takes a while to power up, but once it does, this baby roars. The ostensible goal of Isabella’s creator, physicist Gregory North Hazelius, is to discover new forms of energy, but what he really wants is to talk to God. The project, located inside Red Mesa (“a five-hundred-square-mile tableland on the Navajo Indian Reservation”), is behind schedule, so presidential science adviser Stanton Lockwood hires ex-CIA man Wyman Ford to go to Red Mesa and find out what’s causing the holdup. Meanwhile, a Navajo medicine man, a televangelist and a pastor who runs a failed mission on the reservation are gearing up to pull the plug on Isabella before she destroys the earth. Science has often tangled with religion in this genre, but Preston puts his own philosophical spin on the usual proceedings, and when he gets his irate villagers with their burning torches headed for the castle, the pages simply fly.

February 25, 2008
Two wise decisions move this thriller up from the ranks of the ordinary: Scott Sowers's reading and a bonus interview with Preston by the editor-in-chief of Scientific American
. Sowers, who has read Preston's work in the past with impressive results, adds a needed degree of calm and charm to this tangled tale of a giant superconducting supercollider particle accelerator called Isabella, located inside a 500-acre mesa on a Navajo reservation. Sowers gives all the characters instant credibility, from the physicist who created Isabella, to the ex-CIA man sent by the president to see what's taking so long, and especially a powerful televangelist who sees the project as blasphemy. In the interview, Preston admits he got the idea from the late L. Ron Hubbard. Sowers and Preston make this confrontation between religion and science surprisingly smart and new. Simultaneous release with the Forge hardcover (Reviews, Oct. 22).