Just read: Coalescent (Destiny's Children) by Stephen Baxter

I don't report on all the books I read, but occasionally I'm so pleased by one I feel I want to. This is one. The reason is that it deals with themes that interest me, not least theologically. Now it is not a Christian book by any means, but the plot revolves around the possibility of 'hive' humans and so explores to some degree the tension between the individual and the collective. It presents the conditions for emergence and applies them to a human social scenario. This makes it a helpful way to introduce some of the issues that surround the Stringfellow/Wink approach to the Powers as I am trying to unfold them. For me the theological issue is about the balance involved in humanity between the individual and the collective. And if that is right, the way we image God as Trinity. The issue arising from the novel, and which I presume is further explored in the rest of the series, is the possibility of emergent entities which subsume human beings and turn them into cogs cells in the greater whole. It seems to me that this is part of the potential oppressiveness of the powers, and this picture begins to show why.