Robert Charles Wilson's trilogy-ending followup to his Hugo Award-winning Spin is part ecological referendum and part political intrigue, meandering across disparate paths to ultimately reveal something profound about the human condition.
Vortex moves between an Earth post-Spin and an imagined future where Vox, a networked collective of minds, seeks the fabled "promised land" known as Earth to escape religious persecution. Earth is a dying planet whose fate lies in the decisions of its inhabitants and alien Hypothetical technology that stabilizes Earth's barometric rise.
In this 21st century of "Big Brother" politics, a troubled teen becomes the focal point of law enforcement and Martian drug dealers seeking to alter a wonder drug for personal gain. The teen's sole possession is a manuscript about Turk Findley (introduced in Axis), who happens to be the angst-ridden son of one of the dealers. Findley is transported 10,000 years into the future, drops onto the desert of a distant planet and is picked up by the Vox, who use Hypothetical time-traveling "arches" to traverse planets and seek redemption through fanatical worship of the seemingly benign Hypotheticals. Capitalistic self-righteousness and the futuristic march toward democratic, ecological and genocidal suicide provide the backgrounds for heated discourse about pitting sacrifice for the collective good against personal greed.
Wilson's bifurcated narrative does coalesce, and ultimately succeeds in doing what great science fiction does best: serves as a mirror of who we are, what we have become and what we can be. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant