Bridge of Ashes

by Roger Zelazny

In a future world where telepathy is a rare but known phenomenon, Dennis Guise is a young boy whose unprecedented mental power is not a blessing, but a curse. Unable to control the myriad external thoughts and personalities that flow into his consciousness, the constant influx of telepathic information leaves him in an autistic state, from which he only very rarely awakens. He was the greatest telepath the world has ever known. he was Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and a Children of the Earth terrorist all rolled into one...He was Dennis Guise, idiot child, whose mind had been suffocated and nearly obliterated by a universe of other people's thoughts...And he was Earth's last hope against an enemy that had created the human race but would destroy it all again if Dennis Archimedes Leonardo Jean Jacques Humanity Guise could not meet this enemy on its own terms and win.