By the Light of the Moon by Dean Koontz

Now here is a novel that should be made into a movie. One of Dean Koontz's finest works, in my humble opinion.

Meet Dylan O'Connor, his somewhat autistic brother, Shepherd O'Connor and Jillian Anderson. Dylan is an artist traveling the arts festival circuit selling his paintings. Jillian is eeking out a living as a stand-up comedian on her way to Pheonix for a gig. Shepherd is just along for the ride.

As unlikely a threesome as you'll ever meet, they do meet in a small midwestern town where they all get shots of something referred to as 'stuff' - quite unwillingly, of course by a stranger who resembles nothing more threatening than a country doctor.

Naturally, strange things begin to happen.

Eventually, Dylan and Jillian (Jilly) discover they've been shot full of nanocomputers designed specifically to enhance human brain function.

The first thing that popped into my head was the 1987 Speilberg movie "Inner Space" (directed by Joe Dante) where Dennis Quaid gets miniaturized, put into an extremely small submarine-type machine and goes whirling around inside a human body. But even the vehicle he was in is bigger than a nanocomputer.

My first reaction was, "yeah, right. Nanocomputers. Whoever heard of such a thing?" Surely this is not real. This has to be something Koontz made up. After all, I couldn't imagine a computer as small as a molecule.

Type 'nanocomputer' or 'nanotechnology' into any search engine and you'll find, just as I did, that it is anything but pure fiction.

As wonderful as technology can be, it is equally frightening.

Nanotechnology has been praised for having beneficial applications for health issues and the energy crisis. However, as everyone knows (or should know) any technology in the wrong hands can be equally devestating.

How long before someone creates a 'nanobomb' I wonder. Or uses nanotechnology to spread an epidemic?

Be that as it may, Koontz opted to write about the benefits of those nanocomputers on his subjects Dylan, Jilly and Shepherd.

Dylan and Jilly both experience psychic episodes. But their experiences are not limited to knowledge or visualizations. They are also compelled to act upon what they see and know. Compelled to speed wrecklessley at over one hundred miles per hour down a busy interstate highway to save a woman they've both met but neither of them know from certain death. The morality of their decisions has been enhanced right along with their psychic abilities.

Shepherd, autistic though he is, conquers the mystery of quantum physics and gains the ability to travel from one place to another in the blink of an eye. But when his ability takes them back to a point in the past, it is a very poignant point and the very crux of the novel.

Mr. Koontz portrays, in his usual eloquent style, a vivid story of three-dimensional characters and tosses in a fourth dimension to his writing: believability. Because it is not in the least bit unimaginable that some scientist would actually do this: test his nanocomputers on human subjects without their consent and without telling them what they are up against, save to inform them that people will be after them and they must keep themselves alive somehow. He just doesn't tell them how.

But they do manage to survive and, in the end, they find a way to put their newfound abilities to good use.

Perhaps Hollywood sees this book as being a little ahead of its time. Maybe the subject of nanocomputers is considered too advanced or too frightening for moviegoers to see (can you imagine Hollywood thinking a subject too frightening for film?) Or maybe the powers that be in the film industry simply haven't noticed it yet.

By the Light of the Moon is an excellent read, as educational as it is enjoyable.

Sources:

The Nanoage
Amazon.com
Internet Movie Database