Suburban Gods

An omnibus edition of How Like a God and Doors of Death and Life.

Like many men in this thirties, Rob Lewis figured his normal suburbanlife – wife, kids, mortgage, car payments – was laid out for him till retirement. He didn’t expect to wake up one day and find that it had somehow taken a sharp turn into weirdness.  For suddenly – awkward, ordinary-looking “Bobster” – a Washington, D.C. computer programmer resigned to a routine of deadlines and diapers – found himself with an awesome ability:  He could read people’s minds... and change them.  Now, what do you do when you have limitless power?  Go around righting wrongs, defending the helpless and ringing peace and justice to the world, like a comic-book hero?  The idea was tremendously attractive, and Rob discovered it was all too easy to cure steam-grate crazies and make law-abiding citizens out of criminals.  He could even run the world if he wanted to.  But there was a major downside to omnipotence:  he couldn’t control his own darker side.  What had he become?  A god..or a monster?  And who had done this to him?  Terrified of endangering his wife and kids, he fled his comfortable life and landed on the lonely streets of New York City.  Adrift and homeless, he survived by his power alone.  But just as he hit bottom, he met Dr. Edwin Amadeus Barbarossa, a cheerful microbiologist at the National Institute of Health.  Together, they set out to find anwers to all Rob’s questions – a quest that would lead them to the ancient source of his powers, and a secret that some would stop at nothing to learn.