Lightning (novel)

Infobox Book
name = Lightning


image_caption = Cover of "Lightning"
author = Dean Koontz
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Thriller
publisher = Berkley Publishing
release_date = 1988
media_type = Paperback
pages = 384
isbn = ISBN 0-425-19203-2
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Lightning" is a novel by the best-selling author Dean Koontz, released in 1988. A 2003 reprinting includes an all new afterword by the author, discussing editorial politics.

ynopsis

A storm struck on the night Laura Shane was born, and there was a strangeness about the weather that people would remember for years. Even more mysterious was the blond-haired stranger who appeared out of nowhere again and again to save Laura from tragedy. [StoryCode.com]

Plot Summary

Laura Shane was born on January 12, 1955 during a lightning storm. A mysterious blond stranger prevents Dr. Paul Markwell, a drunk in the wake of his own son's death, from attending to the difficult and complicated delivery. Laura and her mother were attended to by another, more talented doctor. Despite this, her mother dies, though Laura is a perfectly healthy, exceptionally beautiful baby, and is left to be raised by her father Bob Shane.

When Laura is eight years-old a junkie attempts to rob her father's convenience store. Before any harm can come to Laura or her father, the blond stranger appears again saving Laura. On this day, as on the day of her birth, lightning is rife in the air, and it would seem that this stranger’s appearance is also accompanied by this meteorological phenomenon.

The stranger, whose name is Stefan, instructs Laura and her father on what to tell the police about the drug crazed thief.

In 1967, Bob Shane dies of a heart attack. At her father’s funeral Laura sees Stefan watching over her yet again and she begins to think he is her guardian angel. She also encounters a then-unnamed man calling for her after she goes after Stefan. His name is Heinrich Kokoschka, a villain who knows Stefan, but the man is scared off by friends of her father's looking for Laura.

Laura is sent to live in an orphanage, McIlroy, where she was housed with a set of twins, Thelma and Ruth, who later became her best friends. She also meet Willy Sheener, a frightening child molester who is also the maintenance man and custodian. Willy becomes infatuated with Laura due to her uncommonly good looks, haunting her wherever she goes in the orphanage. However, due to past experience the twins warn Laura that reporting Sheener, also known as "The White Eel" or "Eel" for short, will do more harm than good.

Laura is eventually sent to live with a foster family that exploits her, so she purposely behaves badly and they send her back to the orphanage. After several disturbing incidents, Stephan visits Sheener and brutally beats him. This scares him off for some time, but not forever. Laura is sent to live with the generous, loving Dockwielers, with whom she quickly forms a bond, but Sheener comes to their home one afternoon. Laura is able to fend him off and eventually kill him, but upon her arrival home her new foster mother suffers shock on her weak heart, thereby killing her and sending Laura back to the orphanage. Shortly thereafter Laura turns 13 and is moved to another orphanage for older children. It's here that she receives the devastating news that Ruth was caught in a fire in McIlroy and tragically died.

At college, Laura's creative writing brings her to the attention of Danny, a tall, buff naive man who has fallen in love with her from afar. After a botched attempt at being her secret admirer they agree to date and over time, fall in love. After their marriage Laura becomes a celebrated author of several books and even gives birth to a boy, Christopher Robin. Like Laura's mother, her body was not meant to have children so Chris's birth was difficult, making it so she will not be able to have any children in the future.

Years later, Danny, Laura and Chris are saved from a horrific accident by Stefan's intervention. Unfortunately, Kokoschka mysteriously shows up moments later. Both Danny and Stefan attack but Danny dies of several gunshot wounds. Stefan kills Kokoschka and tells Laura what to say, like years ago at the grocery store. He promises to return soon and tell more. Due to mistakes, he doesn't return until a year later.

Stefan reappears in an isolated stretch of winter woods, he is wounded. Laura and Chris battle several assassins and rescue Stefan. They get him medical attention from a doctor found via the phone book. The doctor willingly treats Stefan and gives them medicine. Unfortunately the doctor inevitably tells his story in the future so more killers appear in the present. Everyone, including the doctor, successfully escapes danger.

The group, without the doctor, who had been left unharmed in a neighbor's backyard, hide out in a small motel, paying cash so their movements wouldn't be tracked. Stefan recovers and tells his story. He's from the year 1944 and was part of the Nazi's time traveling experiments. He had come to an alternate 1984 and had seen Laura, a quadriplegic, because her original doctor had been drunk during her delivery. He fell in love with her after reading her books and did what he could to improve her life.

With the help of Thelma, also rich, they gain many supplies they need. Fat Jack, an arms dealer, supplies them with guns and Vexxon, nerve gas. Laura even buys antidote pills for the gas.

With the aid of modern computational technology, Stefan is prepared to go back to his time. He uses the nerve gas to kill the five men on duty at the time and disposes their bodies six billion years in the future. He makes a jump to see Winston Churchill and convinces him that the institute must be bombed. Churchill agrees. Stefan also makes a trip to Adolf Hitler, to convince the dictator of various threads that must be cleared up.

While he was gone, Laura and Chris, in an empty patch of rain washed desert, are attacked by more Nazis, as records of a police stop has been discovered. Stefan returns to find Laura and Chris dead. He works around the time limit of the machine (nothing closer then five minutes apart) to save them. Despite this, Chris and Laura still have to battle all four men themselves. The second cylinder of nerve gas, which the Nazis are not immune to, proves invaluable. It is Laura who eventually kills all four men pursuing them, as she protects Chris as best she can.

In the long months that follow, Laura and Chris are questioned by the police. They soon believe a story of 'drug dealers' who wanted revenge. Laura backs up her story by turning over Fat Jack, something she was going to do anyway (he doesn't blame her, due to his personal beliefs). Stefan, who had been hiding with Thelma, comes to live with the two again. After even more time, Laura falls in love with him.

Time Travel Mechanics

The novel describes the time machine used by the Nazis as resembling a tunnel; when the correct mathematical calculations are made the machine is set and the traveller steps inside and vanishes, reappearing with some degree of precision at the physical and temporal location chosen. There are a number of unique details and mechanics to make time travelling work.

First and foremost, it subscribes to the theory that nature will not allow a paradox to exist, such as meeting oneself. Furthermore, in order to prevent the "Back to the Future" syndrome of preventing one's own existence by past actions, time can only be traversed into the future. The energy used to move through time disrupts the natural environment during the arrival at the target time and place, which causes massive unexplained lightning storms (and the book's title). The departure from the future back to the present does not cause a lightning storm.

Regardless of how long the traveller spends in his destination, for unexplained reasons once he returns to his own time stream (by use of a push button device commonly concealed in a belt buckle) exactly 11 minutes will have passed. Changes made at one point in time will affect all future events stemming from that timeline; however only the traveller himself will be aware that anything has changed, since his own past was not altered. The Nazis pursuing Stefan and Laura lose them at several points while they are on the run. Rather than continue their physical pursuit, they return to the past, then go farther ahead in the future to seek credit card receipts and motel information to determine where the pair will flee to, and go to that time to set an ambush. They could not do this if they had remained after pursuit due to the next aspect.

As stated above, a time traveller cannot return to a temporal location he has previously visited (even if it were to a different physical location), since technically he will still be there and thus create a paradox. This plays a role in the endgame when Stefan witnesses Laura's death at the hands of SS Lt. Erich Kleitmann's men. Since he's already there when she dies, he cannot return there to save her, so instead he returns to 1944 and sends a message in a bottle forward to just before the event, warning of the outcome. Stefan has to be careful to use items from the past to compose the message, otherwise they would not appear when needed.

References

External links

* [http://www.allreaders.com/Topics/Info_25185.asp Lightning Book Review]