An 80's/90's techno thriller novel?

July 11, 2023 9:59 AM

Back in the very early 90's I remember reading a very pulpy techno thriller novel, part of a series by the same author, but I can't seem to find it. Some hazy details: I believe it involved a stone that gave the person who possessed it incredibly charismatic power, I think the macho hero had the stone implanted into their arm towards the end, there was possibly a big cataclysmic showdown in India, and one of the main characters former friends had a gender change, possibly forced, early in the novel. Thoughts?
posted by objectfox to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

"Stone 588" by Gerald A. Browne
posted by ShooBoo at 10:41 AM on July 11, 2023

Best answer: Martin Caidin's "Messiah Stone" sounds exactly like this. It was pulpy to the point of campiness -- I loved it as a summer read!

I don't think it was part of a series....but if it was, now I want the rest of them. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 11:39 AM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

OMG THERE WAS A SEQUEL: https://www.goodreads.com/series/44317-doug-stavers
posted by wenestvedt at 11:41 AM on July 11, 2023

Response by poster: Yes, it was Messiah Stone, though I couldn't find the specific trans-y element I thought was in it, though there definitely was one. Thank you!
posted by objectfox at 12:45 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

There are also Nazis, a beautiful blonde from the Vatican, cholera, helicopters, shitty portrayals of India, and many, many bullets.

If you can stand a lot of casual (or deliberate?) racism, sexism, and other -isms, this is the book for you!
posted by wenestvedt at 1:17 PM on July 11, 2023

If you read a lot of early 90s sci-fi, the trans thread that you're missing may have been from the Margaret Weis & Don Perrin book The Knights of the Black Earth, one of several Star of the Guardians-series spin-off books. The central character's former (thought missing or dead) friend transitioned from male to female, partly as a way to hide after sending several mob bosses to jail, but mostly to finally be their true self. The main character, Xris, is a cyborg, and so the "macho" and "stone implanted in their arm" elements may have gotten mixed up in the remembering...?
posted by xedrik at 4:31 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: The Messiah Stone is definitely a terrible, awful, horrible book. I am reminded of this again paging through it at the Internet Archive. When I moved to Austin right before high school we didn't have a house so we lived with a lady from the church my dad was joining for a while, and aside from being really enamored with the royals, she also liked these kind of books and suggested I read them. The transy bit in one of these definitely stood out to me at the time, though.
posted by objectfox at 10:56 AM on July 12, 2023