What do you think?
Rate this book
Lightpaths #3
Better Angels
With his astonishing future vision, Howard V. Hendrix has emerged as one of the new masters of science fiction, drawing extraordinary praise from his debut novel Lightpaths and the follow-up, Standing Wave . Now he meshes virtual reality, deep-space exploration, and human nature in a novel starkly breathtaking in its portrayal of the quest for meaning, against a backdrop of scientific and spiritual chaos.
During the first, turbulent decades of the twenty-first century, an artifact that resembles an angel’s shoulder blade is unearthed from California’s La Brea tar pit, a startling discovery that will forever alter the lives of five people—and send them reeling toward one blinding moment of transcendental light.
During the first, turbulent decades of the twenty-first century, an artifact that resembles an angel’s shoulder blade is unearthed from California’s La Brea tar pit, a startling discovery that will forever alter the lives of five people—and send them reeling toward one blinding moment of transcendental light.
384 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 1999
17 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 6, 2021
Incomprehensible jibberish. Worse book I have read in years.
August 6, 2025
Yeah this is not the type of series you start on the third book… which I did and shouldn’t have done
November 18, 2020
So, one of the reasons I began writing book reviews and eventually started this blog was so that I could let folks know about those Sturgeon's Law rejects before they invested either time or money in poorly written books. Unfortunately, I fell into the trap, myself, when I failed to consult this blog about an author whom I'd previously panned, before picking up another book he'd written. I could pretend that I was just giving the guy a second chance, but...that would be a lie. For some reason I remembered enjoying his work; must have confused him with someone else.
See my previous review of Lightpaths for all you really need to know about Hendrix, but I'll elaborate slightly here on his more recent disappointment, Better Angels. Hendrix' story is filled with the sort of things you'd find uttered in the dorm lounge of any generic college campus in America, fueled by the consumption of mind-altering substances, and passing for great discovered wisdom for its giggling sycophants. The premise seems to be that some ancient starfaring or galaxyfaring ark once seeded our planet with hallucinogenic mushrooms which would eventually bring on the singularity (a la Kurzweil) and reunite us with the truly enlightened center of the Universe. It is filled with caricatures of the Left's demons, such as big business, the shadow government and organized religion, rather than fully developed real heroes or villains. I kept hoping for the best, but had to give up at the end...of my patience, not the book.
See my previous review of Lightpaths for all you really need to know about Hendrix, but I'll elaborate slightly here on his more recent disappointment, Better Angels. Hendrix' story is filled with the sort of things you'd find uttered in the dorm lounge of any generic college campus in America, fueled by the consumption of mind-altering substances, and passing for great discovered wisdom for its giggling sycophants. The premise seems to be that some ancient starfaring or galaxyfaring ark once seeded our planet with hallucinogenic mushrooms which would eventually bring on the singularity (a la Kurzweil) and reunite us with the truly enlightened center of the Universe. It is filled with caricatures of the Left's demons, such as big business, the shadow government and organized religion, rather than fully developed real heroes or villains. I kept hoping for the best, but had to give up at the end...of my patience, not the book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews