A mystery figure’s sci-fi critique

A fast-moving urban fantasy/techno-thriller, John Twelve Hawks’ “The Traveler” is the much-hyped first installment of a promised trilogy, to be collectively known as “The Fourth Realm.” Although it is never as clever or affecting as it wants to be, there’s much to recommend in this impassioned cultural critique masquerading as mainstream science fiction.

Set in the near future, the novel unfolds against the backdrop of a chillingly familiar consumer society. Here a person’s every action is recorded in a database by a prodigious surveillance technology. Closed-circuit video cameras monitor all public spaces, and any time a citizen uses an ATM or a credit card, his buying habits, location, political affiliation and extrapolated worldview are instantly downloaded into government files. Yet most of the residents of “The Traveler’s” universe tolerate the snooping; they’ve been assured that their personal information is being gathered only to sift out possible terrorists.

It isn’t, of course. And beneath the surface of this oh-so-familiar society rages a battle among three factions: Travelers, Harlequins and the Tabula.

The Travelers are humans able to astrally project themselves into (what are never explicitly referred to as, but obviously are) the six realms of Buddhist philosophy -- gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hell. Twelve Hawks treats these metaphorical areas as real, extra-dimensional worlds coexisting in the universe, alternate realities from which Travelers can bring ennobling knowledge back to a suffering Earth. Such abilities provoke dangerously covetous instincts, so Travelers are guarded by the Harlequins, icily ferocious warriors whose chief opponents are the Tabula, a secret cabal of powerful and greedy men who wish to exploit the Travelers for their own reactionary reasons. A beautiful Harlequin warrior named Maya is assigned to protect two Traveler brothers, but matters go disastrously awry when one sibling is kidnapped by Tabula henchmen. In short, here we have a curiously flat amalgam of reupholstered conspiracy theories, back-to-the-earth activism and philosophical navel-gazing. Think “The Matrix” meets Siddhartha.

Whereas “The Traveler’s” social concerns aren’t new (they reflect Robert A. Heinlein’s dictum that “the human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire”), its marketing and authorship do contain a few interesting twists. Doubleday, perhaps wishing to replicate the enormous success of “The Da Vinci Code,” gave “The Traveler” a huge promotional push. However, it was not the novel itself that generated the media heat but “The Traveler’s” first-time author, John Twelve Hawks. A mysterious recluse whose one-line bio states that he “lives off the grid,” he has never been seen by either his agent or his editor (unless he’s really sci-fi guru William Gibson, with whom he’s widely compared), and apparently speaks to them only via scrambled satellite-telephone calls.

Be that as it may, readers will find much to admire in “The Traveler,” particularly those alarmed by the rapid erosion of America’s civil liberties in the wake of Sept. 11. Twelve Hawks has done his technological and cultural homework. The novel is littered with references to such ominous real-world snooping devices as Carnivore, the FBI’s e-mail-scanning program; biometric information-gathering systems come under scrutiny as well. Twelve Hawks has remained true to science fictional roots by inventing any number of new and uncomfortably plausible surveillance techniques. These include “The Truth Room,” a seemingly secure conference area that’s actually a walk-in MRI chamber that surreptitiously scans its inhabitants’ brains to see if they’re lying.

Unfortunately, like the film it most closely resembles, “The Traveler” needs more than “Matrix”-like action sequences and a deep distrust of invasive technologies to become effective agitprop. Its portrayal of a clueless dystopian society whose all-controlling ruling class makes the Orwellian world of “1984” look like Arcadia may be spot on, but one ends up wishing that John Twelve Hawks (whoever he or she is) had also grafted complex characterizations and a more innovative narrative onto what is clearly a serious, deeply felt, morally outraged work.

Paul M. Sammon is a photographer and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner.”