Not Now: Death, Dreams, & Reasons for Living

Each of the 5 novels of the series Towards the unMaking of Heaven takes place within an intergalactic civilisation known variously as the Supreme Civilisation, or, more often, simply as Space. And the fourth, Not Now: Death, Dreams & Reasons for Living, is an sf exploration of desire, dreams and self-deceit. A clever and conceited young poet, Okinwe Orbinson, is recruited from his artificial city world - part of a moribund space civilisation - by a small mysterious stranger calling himself Leon Reduct. Only when Okinwe has accepted Leon's challenge is he told that his mission is to save a, by now, rumoured Hybrid/Human race, Talkers, from self-extinction.
This is what Anthony Lund said of 'Not Now: Death, Dreams & Reasons for Living - “Like 'You Human,' the book deals with interspecies love and desire, but it also comments on the self, on escaping regularity, on desires and on the dreams of beings. When a stranger called Leon Reduct asks poet Okinwe Orbison to undertake a mission to save the Talkers from extinction, Orbison does not know just how deeply he will be affected by the task he has been given. Full of many dream sequences, self doubt and self discovery, the story once again picks up the true novel feel, its short chapters pushing the story along quicker than the reader realizes. From its opening to closing lines, 'Not Now' is one of the best books of the series, contemplative and questioning while remaining continuously interesting and engrossing to the reader.”