Blue Light [Hardcover]

Walter Mosley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 1998

The human race has just begun. In the Bay Area in the mid-1960s, several people are struck by a cosmic blue light that "quickens" their DNA, causing them instantaneously to evolve far beyond the present state of the human race. They become the full actualization of humankind, with strengths, understandings & communication abilities that exceed our imagining. Blue Light is the story of this quickening, & the conflict between these precursors of a new race of humans & the old breed they seem destined to supplant. Unfolding from the point of view of Chance, a half-black, half-white lost soul who becomes a follower of the "blues," the novel traces battles among those struck by the light (including one who becomes the living embodiment of Death) & their quest to bring their message of evolution & higher purpose to the rest of the world. Blue Light explores some of the questions about race, identity, & humanity that are the hallmark of the author's other best-selling fiction, but his mind-stretching new approach will take his readers to a fascinating place they've never traveled.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Despite the success of his color-coded Easy Rawlins series, Walter Mosley dares, with Blue Light, to go where few mystery writers have gone before. The novel is pure (if not simple) science fiction, less evocative of Philip Marlow than Philip K. Dick. It begins during the 1960s, when flashes of extraterrestrial blue light enter the bodies of several Northern Californians. Those struck by the flashes immediately take on superhuman abilities. Mosley's narrator, Chance, is not himself a recipient of the heaven-sent beams, but after a blood transfusion from the leader of the Blues, his consciousness expands. The biracial, suicidal Thucydides scholar becomes a supernal historian of his new, blue-inflected peer group. He dreams of a "far-flung future, when science is not estranged from the soul" and where human beings will see the world with the purified vision of his enlightened brethren. Still, he is powerless in the face of the Gray Man--a vicious incarnation of evil who seems intent on wiping out the entire Blue population. Somber and violent, bizarre and oddly reverent, Blue Light marks a promising new direction for Mosley. What's more, the dangling threads at the end intimate a vast epic to come (Mosley has suggested that a trilogy awaits) and a literary challenge that's anything but Easy. --Patrick O'Kelley

From Publishers Weekly

You have to admire Mosley: with a gilt-edged brand-name character (Easy Rawlins)in his locker, he still can't resist venturing off in new directions. Sometimes his effort to break new ground works beautifully, as in RL's Dream; sometimes it's an interesting misfire, as in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned.This time, however, it seems plain misguided. Blue Light is an odd mixture of science fiction and inspirational fable about a sort of cosmic ray that enters into a handful of people, giving them superhuman faculties, and the struggle some of these ultra-evolved folk have with the spirit of Death, who has also been granted special powers. Beginning in Berkeley during the hippie love days (well observed, as Mosley's West Coast scenes always are) and eventually migrating into the deep forests of the Sierra, where a group of "blues" create a sort of idyllic pastoral retreat, the story is mostly told from the viewpoint of Chance, a half-breed drifter. One of its more original aspects is that several of the characters, enacting roles similar to those often given by other writers to Native American shamans and seers, are black. There are some jolting scenes of sexuality and violence, and some arresting images, like the vocalizing trees experienced by the "blues"; but the biology is insufficiently imagined, the time sequence is sometimes confusing and a sort of vague poesy that is a far cry from Mosley's typically sinewy prose is the predominant style. Time-Warner audio; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (November 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316570982
• ISBN-13: 978-0316570985
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #900,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Walter Mosley is one of America's most celebrated and beloved writers. His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones, Fear Itself, and Fear of the Dark; the novels Blue Light and RL's Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and Walkin' the Dog. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blue Light - either you see it, or you don't, May 26, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blue Light (Hardcover)

I prefer Mosely's departures from the predictable, and in taking the Chance on Blue Light, received something more profound: a spectral analysis of the colors of human nature, magnified by the simple but brilliant artifice of light itself. The writing in this novel is superbly imaginative; not an overbearing mountain of details but an evocation, a description of what matters, not of matter. Reading about the mind of Grey Man and his tormented host was a marvelously hideous exploration, at once repulsive and sympathetic, suggesting a portrait of schizophrenia. Winch Fargo was likewise a fascinating treatment on evil and identity, the danger of one who has superhuman will and strength but without purpose. I marvel at Mosely's use of language and idea to invent such an original work. The story has many switchbacks and some are drawbacks: as the light strikes many in different places, convergence takes some time to occur. This will not sit well with those who like continuous action and strict sequential progress. The characters, by dint of Blue Light, become outcasts, wanderers and drifters, and as such cannot be given the more substantial treatment that say a similar Socrates is given in Always Outnumbered. The beach scenes therein are recalled in the Blues leader Orde's enlightenment. Again this work is more poetic than prosaic, so be prepared. Mosely is not shy about sex (he borders on the voyeuristic) or violence either. The traditional sci-fi genre fans will be annoyed by the fact that the powers exhibited by the Blues are intangible, and that their discovery by the world at large is as difficult to pin down as an alien corpse. This is a tantalizing angle: that "the revolution will not be televised," and as others have said may be going on as we speak. The notion was entertaining in itself that while I was reading a meta-fantasy (in the mind of Chance all along, and Mosely of course). That's one of the chances you take when you take this on. Mosely makes you work for what you get out of this book. Take a transfusion of uncommon perspective and get an increased wonder at the broadband frequencies of human possibility as your receipt.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important book, February 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Blue Light (Hardcover)

I've never read Mosley's mysteries; I'm normally a science fiction reader. This book will probably annoy SF readers as much as it seems to annoy Mystery genre readers. There are lots of SF books that have dealt with some of the concerns in this book, but there's nothing quite like this one - a real orginal. It doesn't fit any categories. It has to be taken on its own terms. It's powerful, it's beautifully written, and it's so full of thought (if you're looking for it) that it will probably support an industry of students for years. But forget all that - I couldn't put it down. It's wonderful to read something like this. You might notice I'm not saying what it's about. You have to figure that out for yourself! Probably, like the way the blue light affects different people in different ways according to their natures, this will be a different book for anyone who reads it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't believe no-one else liked this book!, August 21, 2004

By 

Joseph Holderness (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blue Light (Hardcover)

I started reading Mosley years (and years) ago, and wondered for a second when I saw Blue Light on the shelves if it was really by the same author. There is a great science fiction/fantasy story in here (if you hate sf viscerally, maybe you shouldn't read it: if you have an open mind and can risk it, you should) and what seemed to me a delightful wistful remembrance of times past in a hippy-freak california you'd have trouble finding these days... I get one of my favourite emotions from this novel: nostalgia for the future (the future the blue light heralds). Where did it go?

I hope another story in this sequence appears almost as much as I'd like another Socrates Fortlow book.