GEORGE PARRENT Entangled

Annotation

Entangled is an extrapolation of contemporary scientific, political, ethical, and social trends to a suspenseful outcome, the Outrage, with an action-filled climax. The story is presented as an episodic series of scenes, vignettes of seemingly independent events or actions, by persons unknown to one another and often widely separated in both space and time. A sampling of the episodes ultimately culminating in the Outrage includes a killer bee attack, an epidemic of dying babies, a sleeping cow disease, a small boy chasing chickens and killing ants, a new type of computer, a young lady defending her honor and reputation, a CIA study, abortion, an unusual young man, a South American War, pointless vandalism of a glass factory, and a professorial comment on a term paper. One, who is familiar with chaos theory and the butterfly effect, will recognize the fluttering of small wings in this collection of scenes. Indeed, Entangled is a societal example of the butterfly effect. This impression is enhanced by the narrator, the Chronicler, who, acting at the request of the United States president, presents the vignettes not in chronological order but rather in the order a historian might have discovered them.