Invasion Of The Dream Wheel

In the year 2204, PharmaGov is secretly putting serum 232, a mind control drug, into every marketable medicine available. This plot is discovered only after 91% of the population has been inoculated. Nevertheless, a revolt forms. Logonus won’t join the revolution because he is enthralled with building the Trance Interface Platform (Dream Wheel). But then Antonio Stravieda, the President/CEO of PharmaGov himself, kills Logonus’ mother. Logonus’ reaction is explosive. He joins the revolution and takes on the rebel’s Bonsai Project to destroy serum 232.
Invasion of the Dream Wheel is classic science fiction that encompasses time travel within a highly adventurous story of rebellion. Meet Acuity Nine, a giant nine tentacle octopus that can out calculate any known computer and that communicates through mental telepathy. There’s chloro-humans whose skins perform photosynthesis as they feed on sunlight, and there’s the Dream Wheel (front cover) capable of sensing past trauma of its passengers and reproducing that traumatic scene upon its deck for all to witness.
We discover why Oksan, a Zen Buddhist monk, would go against all her training to seek revenge? How is it Kevin, of economically depressed Detroit, finally escapes his serum influenced fate? And might Miriam, a girl of 1860s Wales, be able to assist Logonus in his quest while managing to hold her struggling family together?
Watch out, for the Dream Wheel will invade your mind as soon as you open the book.

KIRKUS REVIEW:
Scientists in the 23rd century try to use time-traveling tech to stop their government from acquiring a mind-controlling serum in this SF novel.
University of Pennsylvania professor Loganus Minilar is riding high in 2203. Construction on his Trance Interface Platform, a sentient machine capable of accessing the collective unconscious, is right on track. Then his mother and older sister, both scientists, ruin everything. They warn him that they’re part of a political revolution against the government, which has reputedly injected 91% of the citizens of the United States of North America with SR232, which controls minds. This derails Loganus’ plans, as PharmaGov, which sponsors his project, will shut it down when they learn that his relatives are rebels. But his Platform can save everyone from certain doom. Coupled with spacetime tech, it can travel to the past and prevent a scientist from even developing SR232 back in 2021. The Platform “recruits” three people on its own—mid-19th-century Wales teen Miriam Susston, U.S. high school graduate Kevin Journell, and African American Tanya Batiste, who’s at a Japanese monastery (her Buddhist name is Oksan). Both the latter are living in 2019. The three unite on “the Dream Wheel,” as they call the large, circular platform, but they don’t know why they’re recruits. Loganus and his family are also baffled, and they struggle to earn these strangers’ trust. The group interacts via holograms but also travels through time in corporeal form. With any luck, they’ll shut down the serum’s production before it starts without inciting “butterfly effects.” All the while, the nefarious CEO/president of PharmaGov closes in on Loganus and his allies.
Gauthier jampacks his story with plot and character details. The 23rd-century storyline proves the most remarkable. This SF outing mixes in a solid historical tale with the recruits’ different eras and passing years. . . . Gauthier writes with panache, as when time-traveling Kevin tries to remain incognito in 2021. The ending, considering all that unfolds, offers a surprising resolution.
Futuristic and historical plots collide in this engaging, . . . time-hopping tale.






-- Kirkus Reviews