A Waystation temporal agent's recall beacon fails catastrophically, scattering his consciousness forward through the timestream. He doesn't die. He propagates-embedding in successive human hosts, each unaware of what they carry. Waystation monitors this from outside the timestream.
The novel follows four lives, each echoing one verse of Jimmy Webb's "Highwayman."
Jax Harlan is a salvage operator working the Mars-Jupiter Lagrange corridors from Ceres Station in the asteroid belt. He intercepts cargo of highly valuable, quantum-coherent neural components that trigger fragmented visions of a place he's never been. Pursued by corporate security, he dies in vacuum after ramming his ship into a pursuer to save his crew. He never understands what was happening to him.
Mira Thorne, a century later, commands a research submarine beneath the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa. She carries dreams of dying in space-someone else's death. During a seismic collapse, she stays behind to release the jammed escape capsule tiedown clamp while her crew escapes. In her final moments, she recognizes the earlier death as her own.
Kai Okafor, another century on, is a structural engineer on the Proxima Shield Project, an orbital array, acting as a dam, protecting a million colonists from stellar flares. He is the first host to know what he is. He carries two prior deaths. When a major flare threatens to overwhelm the Shield, he enters the structure to reroute power manually, knowing the electromagnetic environment will kill him. He does it anyway.
Asha Dey, another century later, captains humanity's first interstellar mapping expedition beyond Proxima, the star closest to our sun. She remembers all three previous lives. The Waystation - the temporal institution that accidentally created the anomaly - offers to separate her from the timestream without killing her. Instead, she tells her first officer the truth about what she is, then sacrifices herself to save her crew.
Running parallel to these four lives, the Waystation fractures into two schools of thought. Agents argue over the question of what the anomaly is-an uncontrolled variable to be extracted, or a series of people with human rights. The institution that created the problem cannot agree on whether to solve it (which would kill the humans), or protect it.
The novel progresses deliberately from hard technical science fiction toward increasingly psychological and emotional territory. Jax's story is driven by orbital mechanics, ion drives, and salvage engineering. Mira's shifts toward the intimacy of enclosed environments and the cost of trust. By Kai, the science serves the weight of knowing what you are and choosing to act anyway. Asha's story is almost entirely interior - the hardest problem is no longer physics but whether immortality means anything when you're always alone.
Each of the novel's four parts opens with the first line of the corresponding verse from Jimmy Webb's song, "Highwayman." The song's structure - four lives, four deaths, the persistence of identity across them - is the novel's structural and thematic foundation.
About the Author :
A retired submarine officer, deep-sea & saturation diver, polar explorer, scientist, author, and lifelong adventurer. Spent 22 months underwater, a year in the equatorial Pacific, 3 years in the Arctic ice pack, and a year at the Geographic South Pole. Hold degrees in Marine Physics and Meteorology and a doctorate for developing a system to protect SCUBA divers in contaminated water. A prolific author of non-fiction, submarine historical technothrillers, and hard science fiction. A retired submarine officer, deep-sea & saturation diver, polar explorer, scientist, author, and lifelong adventurer. Spent 22 months underwater, a year in the equatorial Pacific, 3 years in the Arctic ice pack, and a year at the Geographic South Pole. Hold degrees in Marine Physics and Meteorology and a doctorate for developing a system to protect SCUBA divers in contaminated water. A prolific author of non-fiction, submarine historical technothrillers, and hard science fiction.
Review :
Imagine classic science fiction with current-day, cutting-edge science. Sounds good, right? Well, you don't have to imagine, this is what Robert G. Williscroft's latest, The Anomaly, provides.
An epic spanning over 300 years and a dozen light years, (with interludes outside of time and space altogether), this is an intriguing mix of action/adventure and metaphysics. I found myself reminded of Alfred Bester and Fritz Leiber, with heroic yet pragmatic characters worthy of Heinlein. It's a little different from Williscroft's usual fare but every bit as good, if not better. This may be his best yet.
-Alastair Mayer, Author of
The T-Space Series
When does a space yarn stretching centuries into the future become something extraordinary? When time itself becomes a variable, not a constraint. Jealously guarded. Bidirectional. A stream with eddies that cannot be resisted. When engineering precision reaches limits that only human sacrifice can exceed. Such is the newest novel from Robert G. Williscroft. And arguably, his greatest.
I have followed Williscroft since his novel Operation Ivy Bells, a book that pushed the limits of legality in writing. The Anomaly pushes other limits, exposing the reader to concepts beyond science, as we currently know it. Williscroft's engineering and scientific acumen is well earned, but his venture into the other is spell binding. The Anomaly will captivate you as you ponder what it is, and why it has the power to change reality itself. The Anomaly is a Masterclass in Space Suspense.
- John R. Clarke, Ph.D., Author of
The Jason Parker Trilogy
A fantastic premise told with solid science that gives us faster-than-light access to a fascinating future. A belter badlands. A submarine under miles of ice and seawater...on Europa. FTL exploration. Robert Williscroft takes us to exotic locations and challenges us to imagine the possibilities with four stories and a common thread that is the stuff heroes are made of.
-Trenton Bennett, Voice Actor
Narrator of all Robert G. Williscroft's books
Robert G. Williscroft science fiction demonstrates his mastery of technology and engineering. In The Anomaly, he brings something even more important, his realization that human decisions, existential consciousness, and intuition are more important than data. This is a novel of courage, the courage to believe that there is purpose in the very threads of existence.
-Kenneth Weene, Ph.D.
Novelist, Playwright, Poet
