Book Review: Vectors

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Vectors     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Michael P. Kube-McDowell
Class/Genre:   Science Fiction
Bantam, Nov 2002, $6.99, 400 pp.

He is an obsessed scientist focusing on one goal, to prove that the mind and personality is unique using the scientific method. Jonathan accepts a position at the university of Michigan because they have the equipment he needs to map brain activity and photograph minds. He is so enthusiastic about his quest that he has most of the students and faculty volunteering to be research subjects.

At a conference where he tries to the sell the concept that all people do not think alike due to personality differences he meets and falls in love with Alynn Reed. They move in together and between his love life and research, he is a very happy man. An anomoly appears in his research showing two identical brain matrixes, that of a five-year-old boy and of a deceased senior citizen who died just before the child was born. Alynn suggests it is the same mind in two different bodies and that proves reincarnation is a reality. When Alynn is murdered, a grief stricken Jonathan tries to prove that Alynn’s belief system is correct despite the humiliation he receives at the hands of his colleagues and the suspicions of the police who consider him a suspect in his lover’s death.

Michael Kube-McDowell tackles some very tough questions that have haunted mankind down through the centuries. The protagonist is stuck on one paradigm until the evidence takes him in another direction, a journey where the data embraces a different scientific theory scorned by his peers. VECTORS is good work of speculative fiction, filled with wonder and hope.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner