77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

               I’m not a regular reader of Dean Koontz or any other horror writer for that matter.  Regular readers of this site will know by now that I read to be entertained and being scared and/or grossed out is not my idea of entertainment. However, this book made the best seller list and I put it on my to-read schedule. 

               I was fairly impressed 77 Shadow Street. It is as much a science fiction story as a horror story. One of my favorite sci-fi concepts is time travel, and while time travel is not really the point of this book, time shifts within the setting are ongoing throughout the story which piqued my interest. Another ongoing concept in the book is the idea of nanotechnology being able to transform human beings, in this case pretty horribly. A third sci-fi thread running through the story is the “rise of the machines”, artificially intelligent creations eventually taking over the earth and destroying the humans that created them in the first place. This concept is not one of my favorites, but it is a very intriguing and frightening idea.

               And, of course, in the time and place of this story, the humans do prevail. Those who will unwittingly unleash the machines in the future are rendered harmless in the present. But as with any good horror story, the villain remains, biding his time and doing his best to bring about the correct series of events in the past that will allow it to prevail in the future.