Combine that with the rest of what Walton has done and you have a winner. While the details of work as a mycologist aren’t as fully realized as those of code-breaking, there are enough to make it feel true. Walton digs into what intelligence is for and how it is gathered without ever slowing the pace of the story. If true (and there’s no reason to believe it isn’t), the details of that experience make this setting seem lived in. This is a science fiction novel full of humanity and all its inherent beauty and ugliness. Walton’s bio lists his day job as a top secret engineer who works in the US intelligence community.

He’s also still learning that NSA security is never f-ing around. Walton makes Neil into a layered character, one who is frequently torn between family bonds and saving the world – and, frequently, making the situation worse because he is still working out that other people are also torn by their own layers. Those moments offer a chance to catch your breath before the next calamity, some of which our hero brings on himself. The Genius Plague EMS/FIRST RESPONDERS jump kit/supply bag Girl, Wash Your Face 1987 Cabbage Patch Babyland kids Bob Ross bobble head Funko Pop Batman Art. In Walton’s hands, what could be a straightforward “we must save humanity with science” thriller (not that there’s anything wrong with that), becomes, at times, a meditation on what makes us human and why that alone is a survival advantage. But, ultimately, he winds up where he needs to be to solve the puzzle – even if, by the end, the solution, while realistic, is less than comforting. Neil, who initially comes off like a privileged and cocky genius, uses lateral thinking in his interview that nearly get him tossed in jail. Paul Johns is a mycologist collecting fungi in the Amazon Neil Johns, Paul’s brother, is applying for an analyst job at the NSA. Here he takes on biology and code-breaking. Walton took on quantum physics with the Super duo. The tightly plotted and smoothly written The Genius Plague proves that. The Genius Plague, David Walton ( Pyr 978-163388-343-7, $14.95, 400pp, tp) October 2017.ĭavid Walton, who wrote the stellar Superposition and Supersymmetry, deserves to be a lot better known than he is.

The Genius Plague by David Walton