Messiah Of The Cylinder

In 1914, two scientists dine with a wealthy patron and debate whether science will one day replace religion. Lazaroff insists it will happen within a century. The others treat it as intellectual play. They have no idea he's already built something terrible in his laboratory, something that doesn't just predict the future but forces them into it. The cylinder catapults Pennell, Lazaroff, and Esther forward into 2015, into a world the author imagined with startling prescience. Here, Lazaroff has become a figure of near-divine authority, his science indistinguishable from faith, his institute a cathedral of progress. Esther must find her way through a civilization that worships at the altar of knowledge. Pennell must confront what his colleague has become. The question asked at that dinner party becomes unavoidable: what happens when science answers every prayer? Rousseau wrote this in 1914, yet the novel reads like a warning drafted yesterday. It captures the era's faith in progress and its terror of where that faith might lead. For anyone curious about where science fiction came from, and what it was always afraid of.