Opening: The Second Coming was something of a washout, if you remember. It lit up early-warning radar like a Christmas tree, of course, and the Israeli Air Force gave the heavenly host a respectable F-16 fighter escort to the ground, but that was when they were still treating it as a UFO incident.
Capsule: This story is told from the perspective of a reporter who witnesses, firsthand, the arrival into the modern world of someone who claims they are Jesus Christ and interacts with him. I enjoyed the tone of this story, which was light enough for the seriousness of the implications to shine through without ever becoming preachy, and was also ironic without being self-important. If Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law states that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," then MacLeod's elegant story neatly incorporates one of the possible converse implications, namely that in an age when faith in science dominates, supernatural phenomena or magic may be mistakenly interpreted for advanced technology. There is clever dialogue that covers all the obvious and not-so-obvious possibilities, from a multiplicity of perspectives, as well as action. The ending is quite memorable and adds a layer of unexpected personal human depth to a story which deals vigorously with Very Big Ideas.
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