The Visitor

The Visitor is a post-apocalyptic novel. An amateur astronomer, Selma Ornoesky, detects an object occluding the stars in a small segment of the sky and brings the photographs to the local observatory for confirmation. Since the man she has come to see is in Australia, Selma shows the pictures to Nell Latimer, who later passes them on to Neils. After other observatories have confirmed the object and calculated its orbit to intersect with the Earth, the astronomical community holds back the news to prevent a doomsday panic.The astronomers track the object as it falls into Saturn's gravity well and sigh with relief as it swings around and away from the Earth. At that point, a joint announcement is made of the averted danger; the politicians are totally irritated that they were not informed first thing, but mollified by the argument that the orbit parameters had to be refined more precisely before an announcement was made. Then the object swings around Jupiter and right back on track to hit the Earth. BIG panic, worst than the millenial troubles. Prayer becomes a part of life for people who have never even enterred a place of worship before. The government builds a survival bunker near the observatory where the whole thing began and Nell Latimer joins others in suspended animation to wait for, and help, mankind to climb back to a technological society.As the object passes the Moon, it splits into two pieces, one of which sets down at the north pole. The other piece smacks the Earth with a boom heard around the world. This Happening results in an instant population reduction. After the nuclear autumn from suspended dust and water particles, the survivors find their world greatly reduced, with the ocean taking away great chunks at the edge and middle of the North American continent. Moreover, mankind is apparently extinct on the other continents. However, the Moon colony is hanging on and the Mars colony is beginning to prosper.Earth survivors have monsters to fight after the Happening Which Came and Went Again as well as the tectonic upheavals, starvation, disease, and other natural disasters. One group of survivors, the Spared Ones, find a home in the Bastion, a formation of three valleys, and build their capital, Hold, in the intersection of the valleys. There they compile the Dicta of their beliefs and establish the Regime to guide the believers. One of the dicta is the belief in the magic of the before-time. At first, they attacked the demons outside the Bastion at will, but recently have been forced to forgo such pleasures. However, they have gained greatly in machines and other trade goods from the demons which are not otherwise available in their society.Disme Latimer is a resident of the Bastion who lives with her father and brother, as well as her aunt, step-mother and step-sister. The step-sister is a poisonous little snake named Rashael, who likes to cause pain, and Disme is her favorite victim. Rashael discovers rather early that she is no

Tepper is one of the best at blending hard science, socio-political questioning, and edgy almost-fantasy. In The Vistor, she's created a captivating melange of bioengineering, astrophysics, legend, and religion, a post-apocalyptic story both fascinating and frightening. She's adept at infusing mythic elements into her mysterious, twisty plot-lines. At first, the story of Dismé reads almost like the old, original Grimm version of Cinderella, with the stepmother and stepsister revealing their evil intentions ever so gradually, and I could never be quite sure if the spirits and visions which Dismé sometimes experienced would prove to have a "scientific" or a "science fiction" explanation---is it magic? Or leftover, half-forgotten science? Or extra-terrestrial visitation? It didn't matter---as Dismé grew into her powers and her heritage, I was rooting for her all the way, absolutely engrossed by the story, and wondering how it could possibly resolve. I also find it fascinating how Tepper postulates this not-terribly-far-distant society from the trends and attitudes of the present day: self-serving, conservative politics and religious bigotry leading to a terrifying, restrictive future. Very well done!

One thousand years from now -- give or take -- the Earth and her population is recovering from a 21st century asteroid impact that wiped out a good deal of life forms and introduced some things hitherto unknown. Humanity survives in a number of independent city-states, each with its own particular values. One of these is Bastion, settled by religious fundamentalist survivors of the strike. In Bastion, the inhabitants' lives are bound up by dehumanizing rules and dogmas. The main occupation is the search for "the Art," real magic that, as an article of faith, existed before the asteroid strike wiped everything out and will be rediscovered some day. Unfortunately, the search for true magic is so bound in rules, regulations, and dogmas that when it does appear, it is immediately destroyed. Born in Bastion, Disme' Latimer is an odd changeling who neither understands nor subscribes to the dogmas surrounding her. In the process of escaping from her abusive step-sister, she discovers that she is not alone in her feelings and that, in fact, her personal struggles and those of her friends are part of something very much greater than any of them.To readers familiar with Tepper's work, _The Visitor_ reads something like a cross between _Raising the Stones_ and _A Plague of Angels_, although the tone is both more serious and less angry than that of either of the previous novels. There is not a lot of humour to leaven the message, yet the simple, matter of fact way that even horror is presented only makes it that much stronger. Tepper does not try to sway the reader to her point of view; she merely states her case and leaves you to make up your own mind.Like many of her previous books, _The Visitor_ is concerned with the nature of god and the nature of evil. Unlike some writers, however, Tepper makes it plain that in her view true evil does, in fact, exist and is so seductive that even well-meaning people can fall prey to it. The way to combat it, according to Tepper, is to learn to think objectively, without falling prey to any dogma or "ism," even those that seem, to outward apperances, benign. One of the ways she shows this is by extrapolating various dogmas to their farthest, and sometimes frightening, conclusions and then basing societies upon those conclusions. Her findings at times stike one as fantastic, but they are nearly always horribly probable.Although Tepper's worlds may contain almost Utopian societies, she mostly bases her stories in places with serious problems; thus the task of her characters is to overcome those problems. Her vision of the future at times seems bleak, but invariably she holds out hope that things will get better. She does not, however, offer any simplistic solutions for betterment. This may be troubling for readers who like everything to be wrapped up in a nice, neat package with clear instructions as to what's right and what's wrong._The Visitor_ is a book that every thinking person should read.

Her older stepsister Rashel, who cares nothing about her except to insure she does not get in her way, raises (a loose verb for Cinderella-like slavery) Disme Latimer following the strange deaths of family members. As Rashel becomes conservator of a renowned Museum, Disme finds a book written by an ancestor that explains the "magic" that followed the asteroid catastrophe that destroyed the planet. The book hints that her distant relative Nell, author of the tome, still miraculously lives. Disme knows she must hide this book from Rashel who would turn her and her book in to the authorities to further her own career. The youth begins to learn the ancient magic. If the government finds out what she is doing, they would "bottle" her away and her relative would gladly turn her in. However, THE VISITOR who caused the pandemic destruction in the long ago twenty-first century is apparently returning. The world needs a hero, but could that person be a so young, too frightened, and clearly all alone female hiding her activities from her guardian? THE VISITOR is science fiction at its bleakest best as Sheri S. Tepper paints a dark panorama of a distant future filled with repression and gloom. The story line is as complex and furnished with intelligent concepts as much as any genre novel contains yet THE VISITOR is also loaded with action and deeply drawn charcaters. As Zager and Evans break into song, readers will agree that Ms. Tepper has written a tale that will be on everyone's short list as a candidate for the genre's book of the year.Harriet Klausner

Tepper has a strong and vibrant voice in her books that knits incredible, terrifying, beautiful worlds together. The Visitor is a shining example.A book to answer the questions of what happens to us in the very near future after the Earth is struck by an asteriod, it leaps eons to raise issues of science, magic and science as magic. Its underpinnings are futuristic and fantastic, but its story is an emotionally honest tale of the herione's life, disasters, and future consorting with "gods."The characters in this book are wonderfully broad and deep, providing true warp and weft to a fantastic story. Tepper reaches into each of them, pulls out their loves, dreams and fears, and lays them bare for reweaving into a solid story. The imagery of the book's unbelievable violence is tempered by the delicate empathy in its touching humanity. Strong, warm, bloody, icy: you care about the people in this book.Strongly recommended, I wish it had never come to an end.