Wow. Quite the surprise ending! ( )

I'm 50% of the way through this, and it still isn't grabbing me. RJS made a mistake in hitching his plot too closely to history. ( )

Ever since visiting Los Alamos, New Mexico I’ve been fascinated by the Manhattan Project and the people who worked on making an atomic bomb during World War II. So, when one of my favourite science fiction writers published a novel featuring the man in charge of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, I knew I had to read it. Only about half of the book is set during World War II; the rest deals with another challenge that the atomic scientists faced after the war ended. I have to admit that I wondered when the science fiction aspect was going to show itself but the research that Sawyer must have done on the Manhattan Project kept me interested in the first part of the story. I was especially interested in Oppenheimer’s private life as detailed in this book.
Most of this book is based on fact and on actual statements made by historical figures. The story of the secret mission that took place on a remote mesa in New Mexico is well known and I don’t feel the need to repeat this. Oppenheimer is shown as a man haunted by the memory of his first love, Jean Tatlock, who refused to marry him. So, Oppenheimer married Kitty when she got pregnant but he continued to see Jean up until the time he left for Los Alamos. He spent one night with her after the move but because he was under scrutiny by the FBI and Jean was a known Communist, he stayed away from her. Then she committed suicide and Oppenheimer regretted avoiding her for the rest of his life. His married life with Kitty was far from ideal. She was an alcoholic and neither of them were devoted parents. Nevertheless, they stuck together and Kitty plays a big role in the fictional crisis that Oppenheimer and others face after the war. A group of atomic scientists discovered towards the end of the war that some time in the 21st century the sun was going to erupt due to an instability in its core and the three inner planets would be vaporized. Humankind’s continuation required either a mass exodus from Earth to another planet, such as Mars, or some kind of shield to protect Earth from the devastation. After the war many of these scientists plus others like Einstein were gathered together in Princeton, New Jersey to come up with a viable plan to achieve one of these outcomes and Oppenheimer was chosen to head them up. The solution they came up with is certainly science fictional (as in the science needed to achieve it is not yet available) but it ties in very nicely with Oppenheimer’s known history.
Oppenheimer and many of the other Manhattan Project scientists were troubled by their role in unleashing the nuclear age. As one of them puts it in the book, if the US had lost the war killing many innocent people in Japan with the atomic bomb would have been considered a war crime. Oppenheimer was a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission to try to ensure that nuclear weapons were never again used in war. Now that we have a person heading up Russia who threatens to use nuclear weapons the future that Oppenheimer worried about seems all too near. Before I read this book, I didn’t know that J. Edgar Hoover targeted Oppenheimer in his witch hunt for Communists and caused the Commission to revoke his security status. Who knows what he might have achieved if he had stayed on as a consultant? ( )

Largely disguised as a historical novel surrounding the atomic-bomb project of the 1940s, with full bibliography and every character having been a real-world person, Sawyer's first book in several years gradually weaves in the science-fictional aspects you'd expect, until it concludes with an explosion of mind-bending inventiveness. It's a treat to imagine not only Robert Oppenheimer but also many of the last century's other most famous physicists collaborating to solve a seemingly impossible problem.

Out the gate with romance novel cliches and sneering focus on body type. Abandoned on p 25 ( )