THE SCHIZOGENIC MAN by Raymond Harris

[Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070]

THE SCHIZOGENIC MAN by Raymond Harris
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper

I have no idea why this book was written.

Some books are adventure stories. Some have a message. Some examine
philosophical issues. So far as I can tell, this doesn't meet any of these
criteria. It's just that while reading it I kept thinking that it was all
to no purpose. John Heron, the main character (one hesitates to say "hero")
lives in a future city (New York?) in which a lottery regularly reassigns
people's roles. As in the song "That's Life," one can end up a puppet, a
pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a king, as well as just about anything
else. (Shades of Jorge Luis Borges's "The Babylonian Lottery" here?) But
for some reason Heron is asked to take part in an experiment in which he
will dream about ancient Egypt. (The usual scientific hand-waving occurs
here.) So Heron dreams, and in his dream changes history by saving
Cleopatra's son Kaisarion. (Harris is somewhat idiosyncratic in choosing
between Anglicized spellings and "original" spellings of proper names.)

When Heron awakes, however, he discovers the world around him has
changed. "Ah," you say, "a classic alternate history plot." Except the
changes have little to do with Kaisarion's survival. No Egyptian temples
dominate the New City skyline. No Pharaoh rules the land. Some of Heron's
friends have different jobs, and he has a different first wife, but that's
about the extent of it. History just doesn't work that way.

At any rate, Heron tries (for insufficiently explained reasons) to find
his way back to his original starting world by tracing his way down time
threads when waking from the "dreams." Classic alternate history rules say
this is impossible--one must return UPSTREAM of the change in order to
return to the unchanged world. But Heron is mostly concerned with finding
only one other person unchanged, so maybe it is possible.

But who cares? The external world is affected by Heron's actions but
not enough for us to care. And that Heron might or might not find the
person he was seeking was a matter of disinterest to me. I kept reading
expecting something to develop that would involve me either intellectually
or emotionally, but it never did. I suppose the descriptions of life in
Cleopatra's Egypt might interest some, but they are not enough to make me
recommend the book.

%T THE SCHIZOGENIC MAN
%A Raymond Harris
%C New York
%D November 1990
%I Ace
%O paperback, US$3.95 [year]
%G ISBN 0-441-75398-1
%P 229pp

Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or e...@mtgzy.att.com