There is a way of thinking about all life as a one-way flight (of consciousness).  What makes this existential suicide mission heroic or not is whether we choose our own "telemetry."  Omon Ra does.  Omon Ra, the protagonist of the book, as millions of Russians was born into the "life" simulation of Soviet-style reality that ideologically trained generations for self-sacrifice.  Omon Ra is on the absurd path of ideological collectivism:  he is both empowered and objectified.   Omon Ra escapes the determinism of his heroism - both through an intriguing plotline and through his own search for meaning.  Omon Ra is fittingly named: his first name is after the Russian police special forces unit, O.M.O.N., which is, by definition, a self-selected group of trained martyrs; his self-given name, “Ra,” (his self-view), is after the Egyptian god of sun, invoking the idea of the eternal return.  The Soviet notion of sacrifice was a kind of Mahayana Buddhism ethic of an ideological bodhisattva (a heroic being that pursues the enlightenment of all).  Culturally conditioned for heroism, Omon Ra is ambivalent, but, ultimately, consents to his mission, not out of collectivistic peer pressure, but out of his own dream-fulfillment spirituality - and in so doing, he passes the “reincarnation checks” and chooses his own "telemetry."  The book's last paragraph says it all: "I had to decide where to go <...> and began to work out where exactly on the red line I was."  "Omon Ra" is a literary analog to Terrence Malick's "Thin Red Line."  Omon Ra is Private Witt.  The "thin red line" - the one-way flight of consciousness we all share...

Pavel Somov, Ph.D., author of “Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time” (New Harbinger, 2008)  www.eatingthemoment.com