Count to a Trillion

Decades after the world has descended into anarchy, Menelaus Montrose dreams of making it better. He jumps at the chance to escape backward Texas, now an independent country, to participate in a daring expedition to recover antimatter from an alien relic in a nearby stellar system. Montrose’s misguided self-experimentation leaves him comatose for years; when he regains consciousness, he learns his surviving crewmates have used the antimatter to conquer and reshape Earth. They have also left the planet obligated to the alien hierarchy responsible for the antimatter’s creation. Wright (Orphans of Chaos) is at his best when he abandons his trite characters and cardboard terrestrial setting to contemplate the Stapledonian implications of a government able to function across the vast expanses of space and time, appealing to readers interested in glimpses of the unfathomable immensities of our universe. (Dec.)