Picoverse - Softcover

Metzger, Robert A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044101030X ISBN 13: 9780441010301

Publisher: Ace, 2003

Synopsis

A hard science fiction novel by the scientist-author of Quad World journeys into a strange world, created by deliberately tearing apart the fabric of space-time, that is one million-millionth the size of our own universe. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

Robert A. Metzger is a research scientist in the area of semiconductors, high-speed telecommunication, and datacommunication devices. He has held distinguished teaching and consultation positions with Hughes Research Laboratories and the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of the novel Quad World and 25 short stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Amazing, Aboriginal SF, and Weird Tales. He has contributed many pieces to Wired, and is cofounder of a technical trade journal, Compound Semiconductor.

From Publishers Weekly

This fast-paced romp through multiple manmade universes from Metzger (Quad World) will appeal to hard SF fans who like their science served straight up. In 2007, a team of physicists working on fusion power stumble onto a way to create new, smaller universes picoverses which replicate everything in our universe but smaller. After a disastrous test of the Sonomak machine, the mysterious Alexandra takes over the project. She has her own priorities, which include escaping her bosses into one of the picoverses, and she needs researchers Katie, Horst and Jack to execute her plan. Naturally, things go awry, and Katie and company find themselves exiled to a picoverse that duplicates Earth in the 1920s. The Sonomak is a reality there, too though made with vacuum tubes and run by researchers who include Werner Heisenberg and Albert Einstein. This is just the start of a race through a number of picoverses, as our heroes attempt to get home and defeat the nonhuman Alexandra. Alternate realities collide, with the very fate of Earth and the universe at stake. The preponderance of characters with superhuman powers gets old, as does the author's holding back crucial information about events and then springing it on us just in time to save the day. But the book hangs together thematically turns out saving the universe is not about manipulating the fabric of space-time, but about manipulating someone who can manipulate the fabric of space-time and the happy ending satisfies. Agent, Richard Curtis. (Mar. 5)Forecast: Supportive blurbs from the likes of Gregory Benford, F. Paul Wilson and Charles Sheffield should help, but some readers may be put off by the author's over-reliance on deus ex machina.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ace
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 044101030X
• ISBN 13: 9780441010301
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 400