Walter Mosley, best known for his Easy Rawlins mysteries (Devil with a Blue Dress et al.) has described the theme of his Crosstown to Oblivion series as "a black man destroys the world." Following the first two volumes, Merge/Disciple and The Gift of Fire/On the Head of a Pin, in 2012, Mosley's third and final pair of short novels, Stepping Stone/Love Machine, makes the theme literal.
The two stories are printed "back to back"; choose either story and, once you've finished reading it, flip the book over and start again. Love Machine tells the story of Lois Kim and her involvement with Dr. Marchant Lewis, a heaving bulk of a man who has created a way to share consciousness with other creatures, both human and animal. What follows is a roller-coaster ride of speculative fiction, ending in a final battle with another life form. Stepping Stone takes an archetypal Mosley loser with no prospects, mailroom manager Truman Pope, and makes him the key to humanity's future--a transformative process that will reveal the ultimate direction of Pope's moral compass.
Mosley tells deep, smart allegorical tales with an equal mix of poetry and social commentary, encouraging more than a single close read. His characters breathe with life, and the alien in the stories is most frequently our own deep, hidden desires and fears. The monsters, meanwhile, are the ones who think they run the show. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer & editor