Robert Charles Wilson has a knack for imagining unusual paradigm disruptions on a global scale. In Darwinia, one half of the planet suddenly “reverts” to a prehistoric state that has never existed; in his latest novel, The Chronoliths, massive monuments to a mysterious conquerer start popping up all over East Asia.

The physical shock wave of these manifestations is powerful enough to raze whole cities. The monuments are indestructible and are engraved in tribute to one man, named Kuin, whose conquests of city after city are dated 20 years in the future. As larger and larger monuments appear, the world knows that it has only two decades to prevent a dictatorship on a scale never seen before.

Scott Warden, the novel’s protagonist, witnesses the first Kuin manifestation. He is an American in Thailand, a drop-out who’s dragged his wife and child into a beach community of expatriates that keeps the local drug runners in business. As his colleague, scientist Sulamith Chopra, struggles to figure out the technology behind the manifestations, Warden writes the computer code that may be the answer to achieving the technology.

Wilson skillfully weaves discussions of the theoretical physics of time and space that make the manifestations possible into the story. If you read science fiction for its scientific extrapolations, then there’s much here to satisfy. If, like me, you read the genre for its examinations of human lives in a crucible, then The Chronoliths also delivers the goods.

Wilson creates an appealing cast of slackers, drug dealers, addicts, absent-minded geniuses, and cult followers, all endowed with real human consciences, making their predicament all the more shocking when evil shows up in their midst. These people can barely handle their own lives; how are they going to deal with the single-minded juggernaut that is Kuin? At its heart, The Chronoliths is a compelling exploration of imperfect people trying to do the right thing.