The Visitor by Sheri S. Tepper

Mortification Scale: One Tomato Face

• Fantasy novel

Mitigating Factors:

• Sheri S. Tepper is one of the best authors in the world
• Only an idiot would discount this fabulous book for being fantasy/sci fi
• Reintroduced me to the concept of synesthesia
• Great argument for rationalism as opposed to superstition
• I always love post-apocalyptica

Synopsis:

The time is 3052 AD. After the UFO struck Earth, only one in one thousand people survived. Slowly, societies began to rebuild in various small pockets. One of these enclaves, the Saved, was founded by a group of embittered members of the religious right. Predictably, this society is fairly horrific. There is a totalitarian government, strict moral strictures, and the lovely practice of "bottling" people when they are ill or defective. Bottling is saving a small chunk of flesh and keeping it alive with nutrient washes. This custom grew out of the original thought that if a zygote was considered to be life, then a single cell of an individual was equivalent to the entire being and thus everyone could achieve immortality by their cells' eternal life. Yuck!

It turns out that the UFO was actually a group of alien life forms returning to earth in response to the prayers of the faithful for God to step in and solve the world's problems. "God" answered and she decided that killing off most of the world and then separating the sheep from the goats was the solution. Maybe not quite what the fundamentalists had in mind - be careful what you wish for. 21 people from different areas of the surviving land masses (the seas have risen) are now incarnations of various alien consciousnesses and are responsible for saving the world. There is also a small group of scientists that have been alive since the catastrophe by taking four year shifts of being awake and then sleeping in suspended animation for dozens of years before waking for the next shift. The battle against evil is a lot of fun.

The Visitor is a little less accessible than Ms. Tepper's other books, but has her recurring themes of environmentalism, feminism and rationalism. This is an excellent book by an amazing author!