The Chronoliths: Monoliths from the future

The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson

Scott Warden, known to most as “Scotty,” kept his wife and daughter, Janice and Kaitlin, in Thailand after the coding contracts dried up. Scotty now spends most of his time aimlessly “just living” in the ex-pat beach culture. Scotty’s broke, but at least he doesn’t deal drugs like his buddy, Hitch Paley. Drug dealer he might be, but Scotty figures that Hitch is basically a good guy, deep down.

It’s Hitch that takes Scotty along the back roads to see the first Chronolith.

The Chronolith is impressive and mysterious. Where did it come from? It marks the first victory of Kuin  — except that it’s dated twenty years in the future. When Scotty returns from seeing the first Chronolith, he discovers that his daughter got sick and had to be hospitalized. Janice tried to contact Scotty but couldn’t find him. It’s the last straw for her, and she returns to her home in Minneapolis. Scotty decides to grow up and he returns to America.

Though America remains focused on other problems, the Chronoliths keep appearing across Asia, documenting Kuin’s future conquests. Sometimes they appear harmlessly in the countryside but sometimes they appear with catastrophic impact in cities. Whether he knows it or not, Scott appears to be tied to the Chronoliths, and the physicist Sue Chopra soon recruits him to help her study the Kuin stones.

Looking back, it’s clear that the arrival and spread of the Chronoliths became the defining event of the 21^st century. Because they’re arriving in Asia, they send Asia’s economy and governments into chaos, which causes America’s economy to shrink. The American southwest begins to run out of water. As Kuin’s monuments spread, the government begins to spend all of its money preparing for war. Times are tough and people are paranoid.

However, the next generation begins to declare its support for Kuin. They wear K+ t-shirts and even go on pilgrimages to see Kuin’s Chronoliths. One cop explains the new generation like so:

they have no future, and they know it. The thing is, it’s true. The economy sucks, that’s no secret. And what else do we have to offer them? Everything they hear about the future is all Kuin, Kuin, Kuin.

What’s disturbing is that the more people prepare for Kuin, the stronger he seems to become. Kuin’s Chronoliths declare his strength, which creates his strength. The fear that people feel and act upon is creating an inescapable, terrifying future.

These self-fulfilling prophecies and self-reinforcing habits can be found throughout The Chronoliths, which should be read as a cool science fiction novel but also to consider the ways in which our focus determines our reality. The Chronoliths and what they do seem paradoxical, even mad, and Scott first witnessed this dynamic in his schizophrenic mother, who learned to see the fear in her son’s eyes, which fed her paranoia that he was scared of her. Sue Chopra, who is determined to defeat the Chronoliths, lives a lonely life because she works so hard at figuring them out. As one of her friends explains, “the harder she worked, the more important her work became.” Much of The Chronoliths is depressing because it seems that we are locked into forces that are beyond our ability to alter. However, it’s reassuring to watch Scotty transform himself from a beach slacker into Scott, a responsible father.

There is much to be said for Robert Charles Wilson’s The Chronoliths. It has a cool “big science fiction” idea, pace, a sympathetic cast of characters, and a short page count. Wilson has produced the sort of science fiction novel that can pass as a thriller. While Michael Crichton fans should enjoy this novel, I’m not sure that it could ever be transformed into a film (but who cares?).

Although I enjoyed reading The Chronoliths, I was most struck by the timing of its publication. Wilson first published The Chronoliths in August of 2001, and it was certainly fascinating, given what would happen in New York City a month later, to read a novel about how towering monuments and destruction brought about by mysterious and terrifying forces  — and how these events might shape the 21^st century. The Chronoliths is compelling in part because it eerily proceeds alongside our own history, inviting readers to consider how we’ve responded to the challenges we face and the future our decisions are creating. Recommended.