From Booklist
Except on "naked Sundays," Damian Veer and his wife were absorbed in research to facilitate voyages to the nearest stars. The projects that each worked on separately succeeded, but then, too, the Scourge came and endowed humans with "genius." Now most people live, happily because their thoughts are realer than physicality, in containers "as comfortable as a hospital bed and not much larger." Not Damian, who has a house and, when he goes out, cloaks himself to escape the Scourge's notice. Then a woman moves in next door. Gradually, Damian comes to suspect she is his long-lost wife. She isn't the only thing that is not what it seems to be--and that is the end (conclusion and point) of Reed's absorbing and disorienting variation on the classic E. M. Forster story, "The Machine Stops."
Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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