The Georgia Straight – Book Review

Universes collide in Timothy Taylor’s The Rule of Stephens

Most of what you need to know about Timothy Taylor’s new novel is contained in its title, and we’re about to explain that title now. Step away if you have to be surprised.

The “Stephens” invoked here are the physicist-philosopher Hawking and the horror-fiction innovator King; the “rule” is that the world has to operate according to rules laid down by either one or the other. Hawking’s universe is mysterious but orderly: forces act on other forces and there are consequences; logic can untangle any snarl. King’s, instead, embraces a mirror-image version of that most fatuous axiom “Everything happens for a reason.” Nothing happens for a reason on his terrain; the world is random and cruel.

Are these mutually exclusive world-views? Not when your protagonist has fallen 28,000 feet out of the sky when the airliner she’s riding in disintegrates… Read More