CUSP: A Review

I have written previously about what I called Really Big Concepts in science fiction. For that novel, it worked. For this novel, CUSP, by Robert A. Metzger, it initially works, but ultimately fails.

The novel opens in 2031 as a solar flare of unprecedented size is occurring. Some people realize it is not just an exceptionally large flare; it's edges are absolutely straight. Something is controlling it. And it is causing the Sun to move.

At the same time this is occurring, two monstrous walls, many miles wide and tall, rise from the Earth, while all of the planet's seismic faults simultaneously snap. The walls straddle the planet in two directions, along the equator and across the poles. All of this throws the entirety of the planet's civilization into chaos. Soon after that the solar flare shuts down and the Sun stops moving.

CUSP then jumps to the year 2051. The survivors of the 2031 events have been spending the time both trying to recover and to understand what happened. It is at this point that author Metzger starts bringing in metaphysical concepts that I feel ultimately cause the failure of this novel.

In 2051 one man, a U.S. Army General, has gathered enough intelligence about the events of 2031 to know that the Sun's controlled flare will soon start up again to resume moving the star, and at the same time energy output from the planetary walls (now called the Rings) will cause Earth to move with it, and there is no way he or anyone else can stop all that from happening.

But the General is determined to find a way to exert some degree of control on the manner in which the movements of the Sun and the Earth occur. And this is where the metaphysics start coming into play. The General believes the only way he will obtain such control is if humanity transcends itself and moves to a higher level of existence (moves past the Point, to use author Metzger's word.)

I found the talk between characters about transcending the Point eventually got so dense that I simply found it unreadable and I started skimming pages trying to find something that I would find more readable. And for me, such a development means this is not a novel I will want to retain and eventually read again.