Welcome Chaos

Kate Wilhelm's Welcome Chaos, originally published in 1983, is currently published only in audio version, ably narrated by Johanna Ward (who is also Kate Redding). This scientific thriller centers upon Lyle Taney, a 40-ish history prof who sets off to Oregon to do research on eagles. Before she leaves, she is visited by a sinister, demanding government official who wants her to obtain fingerprints from a suspect living near the cabin she is renting. When Lyle meets the suspect in Oregon, she discovers Sol, a charming, learned older man, and his hunky young male assistant, Carmen. And steps off the edge of the world she has so long studied into a veritable doomsday scenario. Wilhelm has done a masterful job at setting up her plot and filling the reader in, quite painlessly, with the complicated but necessary scientific background essential for understanding the terrible possibilities and repercussions that will follow the dissemination of Sol's work. She has populated the novel with vibrant, substantial characters and lovely descriptive images. In a genre prone to hyperbole, Wilhelm employs commendable restraint in passages in which fear, anger, and panic run high. Welcome Chaos is a thought provoking novel that prompts the reader to examine the way in which the world as we know it could become something else entirely in the blink of an eye. And there are no easy answers to the questions it proposes.

This book is long overdue for reissue, or at least an e-book release. It includes intrigues,romance, and speculation about mortality and immortality. The relationship between characters is well realized, and the description of the Oregon Coast is wonderful.

When I'm stranded on that desert island, this is one of the ten books I'd like to take with me. It is readable and re-readable. The imagery is haunting, the characters well-rounded.