a novel of contemporary science coming across the extremely unusual. (Cosm - Gregory Benford)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	Cosm - Gregory Benford
Date:	19/03/01 (19 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Science; let us hope it is not quite true- A

Disadvantages: Characterisation; feels slightly out of proportion with itself; C+

One of Gregory Benford's; not part of his spinal menacing- robot Galactic Centre cycle but, like Timescape (a novel whose date we have already passed, like so many, but which remains well worth reading), a novel of contemporary science coming across the extremely unusual. An experiment in a cyclotron- the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which actually exists, apparently, and surely on those grounds the events of the novel constitute a giant lure set out to bait Fate?- goes drastically wrong. Or right, possibly; at any rate far more than was thought of. An experiment involving smashing uranium nuclei- the heaviest available, and the ecofreaks who hang around the fringes of science do object- together goes supercritical. Entirely apart from blowing out an incredibly expensive section of the detector, it generates something.

The something, after the hero absconds with it back to her own university, for reasons of sheer scientific greed ('No! Mine! I get to publish on it first!'), turns out to be a wormhole. A window into another universe. A crucial opportunity- but is it actually a creation in itself? (The book does end up suggesting so, at the end.)

A large part of the book follows the social lives of the scientists involved; the black particle- physicist heroine, Alicia Butterworth, is wedded to the job in a way that I am sure Benford is familiar with, and that everything else I have read of the lives of scientists seems to validate. Nothing is wrong; it fits, and between her and her friends there are some searchingly cynical observations on what it is like to be a very intelligent woman looking for a potential partner. She ends up with the man she turns to for advice on the thing, a theorist- and as if the Two Cultures were not bad enough (although as anyone from the working class can prove to you, either is better than the alternative) the split between experimenters and theorists gets a very funny airing. He does throw an overfrien
dly date out of her apartment in a scene that might as well be subtitled 'hey, scientists have real problems too'.

The incompetence of administrators to support their scientists is another problem. Baxter in Voyage says in so many words that the failure of NASA to move on after Apollo was due to a failure of administrators to hold up their end in public; the faculty dean comes out of this with no credit at all, an officious power- dresser with no feel for front- line science any more.

This is primarily a domestic novel; the ultra- large-scale weirdness is, while falling well under Bethe's 'not even wrong', strangely plausible. There is some clumsily-done spy stuff; you get the feeling that, while well at home in the lab, Benford is far from being able to share the mentality of the intelligence agent. A band of born- again nuts try to kidnap her; this is poorly done, and by far the most hair- raising aspect of it is that he seems to regard it as a matter of course that something of the sort could take place. There is an entirely plausible resentment that anything of the sort should be necessary, any guile on her part, from Alicia; and they do end up absconding with the thing at the end, as an alternative to having the project shut down. I liked it; science fiction with real science, if the characters are a little exaggerated at times.

Imagination; more assembled than cut from whole cloth; B-
Science; let us hope it is not quite true- A
Scene- setting; If it was pure SF, it would be very good, but it is partially in the real world- B-
Characterisation; feels slightly out of proportion with itself; C+

Overall; very useful nearly- straight hard SF; B

Summary: