Broken Symmetries by Paul Preuss (
ISFDB,
Wikipedia), whose work you may know best from either his "Venus Prime" tie-ins in the Arthur C. Clarke spinoff franchise, or having seen
The Core sfnal disaster adventure film (
Wikipedia) which was ve-e-e-ry loosely based on one of his novels (
Wikipedia), depending on how old school you are, is the 1st in his Peter Slater series of sci-fi adventure technothrillers starring the eponymous plucky theoretical physicist, his feisty photojournalist love interest (f/m), and his archnemesis
du livre, another physicist who claims that his discovery of a new particle which Our Hero suspects to be unstable and dangerous will change everything, leading to the obligatory disaster that must be thwarted, free courtesy of publisher Diversion Books, who are e-printing it from its original 1983 Pocket Books Timescape edition.
This placed 23rd in the voting for the 1984 Locus Award category for Best SF Novel, has quoted blurb praise from the late Roger Zelazny on it, and the 2nd-in-series apparently netted a quote from Ursula K. Le Guin.
Currently free @
iTunes (available to Canadians and most places worldwide, as Diversion freebies often are).
Normally these also become free at Amazon as well, but this doesn't even exist there in the store yet, even though the 2nd-in-series, Secret Passages already has a listing. Now shown up and slated to drop @
Amazon (usually available to Canadians & in the
UK and elsewhere).
If you happen to like this one and wish to read more thrilling adventure tales of plucky theoretical physicists thwarting their misguided archnemeses' fabric of space-time-endangering experiments, the 2nd novel, as well as some of Preuss' other backlist sfnal thrillers, are reasonably low-priced from Diversion Books and couponable @
Kobo.
And this has been the selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.
Because two-fisted science adventures are made of win and awesome, even if some of them eventually become bywords for
Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics.
(Incidentally, my very favourite snarky sci-fi disaster film review is this one by a paleoclimatologist who had to be bribed to watch it:
The Day After Tomorrow (
Wikipedia),
as reviewed by William Hyde of Duke University, who received $100 for it, which went to charity.)
Enjoy!
Description
BROKEN SYMMETRIES introduces theoretical physicist Peter Slater and world-traveling photojournalist Anne-Marie Brand. They meet in Hawaii, where Anne-Marie is in pursuit of a story about the giant atom-smasher TERAC, the newest and biggest particle accelerator in the world, built amidst the pineapple fields of Oahu. Dr. Martin Edovich is the triumphant scientist behind the project—he claims that "his" discovery of I-particles will win him the Nobel Prize and change the face of physics.
But Peter Slater predicted the existence of I-particles long ago and suspects that they are unstable—explosive and potentially cataclysmic. And as TERAC ramps up, Slater’s theory is about to be tested.
The symmetries of matter itself are about to be unexpectedly broken, unleashing the fury of self-annihilation...