by Richard M Weiner, CreateSpace. Paperback ISBN 9781451501728, $9.99.
Still looking for Christmas presents? Maybe one for your auntie who still doesn’t understand what you find so fascinating about physics? You may have already tried buying her popular science books, but they are sitting on a shelf, unread? Well, here is a book with an interesting basic idea: a novel about a scientist, a young genius with well developed mad streaks, a dramatic death in a computing centre, capable and less capable police forces from various countries, privately funded research organizations, CERN (as we do and don’t know it) and a theory. What if one could change the constants of nature? What if, for example, the charge of the electron could be modified in a way that it would have an influence on the size of atoms? Do smaller atoms mean smaller people, and would that solve the world’s energy crisis?
Richard Weiner, author and professor of theoretical physics, based at Marburg University in Germany and the University of Paris-Sud, France, thought that this idea was worth exploring – at least in fiction. His first “science thriller”, published in 2006 in German and in 2010 in English, first kills scientist Trevor McCallum and then traces his steps from geeky childhood via troubled adolescence to genial research and his last moments before he dies of an improbable surge in computational power. Sounds like good holiday reading?
Well, unfortunately your auntie might not be too impressed because The Miniatom Project does not really hold what it promises. While the precept is certainly original and the idea to use it in a novel to engage the non-scientist is laudable, the plot is very constructed, dialogues and characterizations clunky and the tone at times verges on being patronizing. Inconsistencies about CERN and thinly disguised CERN personalities (an attempt at a roman à clef?) will not trouble your auntie that much, but the translation is likely to grate with her. CERN certainly is fertile soil for art and fiction of all kinds but The Miniatom Project could have done with more editing before going to print.
