Shiner begins this novel realistically in a contemporary Mexico where Rolling Stone reporter John Carmichael has been drawn in his search for news, and anthropologist Thomas Yates has come to search for his missing brother, rock musician Eddie. Eventually, they meet among the ancient Mayan ruins where Eddie has gone on a pilgrimage with the Mayan descendants among whom he now lives. There, while trapped between Cuban backed insurgents and a clandestine American force, Eddie pursues his experiments with mushrooms. He claims that instead of psychedelic visions, they actually transport him back in time to his own past and to the great days of Mayan culture. Although well written and occasionally thoughtful, the narrative, whose opening reminds one of warmed-over Robert Stone, moves to fulfill the cliched apocalyptic aspirations of the title.

Lewis Shiner is one of the original cyberpunk authors. He's been a cyberpunk rhetorician since the Movement's beginning. His voice has been a primary and highly articulate force in cyberpunk's bullheaded and successful battle for public acceptance without compromise. Yet, like most (or all but Gibson) cyberpunks , his own fiction is unlike the others -- excepting, of course, an uncompromising devotion to quality.

Since his first publication in 1977, Lewis Shiner has written a widely ranging spectrum of short stories: mysteries, fantasies, and horror as well as SF. But the 1984 appearance of his first novel, Frontera , demonstrated his important role in Movement fiction. Frontera combined classic hard-SF structure with a harrowing portrait of postindustrial society in the early twenty-first century. The book's gritty realism and deflating treatment of SF icons aroused much comment.

Shiner's work is marked by thorough research and cooly meticulous construction. His lean, vigorous prose shows his allegiance to hard-boiled mystery fiction as well as to such quasi-mainstream authors as Elmore Leonard and Robert Stone.

Lewis Shiner was born in 1950 in Oregon, United States. He grew up in Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, and in the Sudan. Mr Shiner describes himself as a compulsive researcher. He has travelled widely throughout the USA and Mexico, and has worked as house painter, rock musician, computer programmer, draftsman, clerk, and construction worker.

Bibliography

Frontera (1984)

Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988)

The Edges of Things (191)

Nine Hard Questions About the Universe (1990)

Slam (1990)

Glimpses: A Novel (1993)

Say Goodbye (1999)

Rock 'n' roll novel.

Lewis Shiner is also the editor of "When the Music's Over" (1991) anthology, which contains short fiction stories.