Multiverse - The Story

Set in the near future, the American economy has collapsed and depression era unemployment is rife. Banks are foreclosing on homes at an alarming rate sending families into makeshift camps which are appearing in the parks of all major cities.

Congress is paralyzed by gridlock between three parties each with a wholly different view about what needs to be done.

The still dominant Rationalists are holding to the position that the existing system which has brought prosperity to millions since the war, underpinned by scientific logic and free markets, is fundamentally sound and will self-correct.

Nationalists want to reverse globalization, rearm, and intern the dispossessed in ‘Hospitality Centers’ established in remote areas around the country – out of sight, out of mind.

Moralists argue that science and free markets have been allowed to function without any regard to their social purpose and that God must be put back at the center of the decision-making process.

Urged on by the charismatic evangelist Richard Preston, whose broadcast God This Day is widely followed, President Henry Dukes, a Moralist, is struggling to push his Home Stabilization Initiative through Congress.

Senator Milo M. Meadows III, a Nationalist, wants to be the next president and is determined to thwart him. The Rationalists simply want to retain power and in order to do so will go with either the Moralists or Nationalists if they have to.

The backlash against scientific arrogance is preventing Carrie Holden, a budding astrophysicist, from getting her doctorate. Her childhood friend, Jay Chandler, is being encouraged to stand for the House as a Moralist by the San Francisco billionaire Marjory Anhauser, while President Dukes and Milo Meadows increasingly resort to the political black arts in their struggle for power.

The novel describes how these political tensions are resolved as well as how Carrie Holden and Jay Chandler’s lives intersect. The title ‘Multiverse’ (drawn from String Theory, a strong contender for ‘the theory of everything’ beloved by physicists) speaks to the idea that many types of society are possible but that each is a child of its own moral tone or context and that during periods of disorder individual acts can determine long-lasting outcomes.