've come to realize that adversity can be the scientist's greatest ally. ... An abundance of funding causes one to become complacent, to follow a conservative approach that only incrementally increases one's knowledge, adding a brick here or there to a scientific edifice which
already reaches to the heavens. But the new breakthrough, the new insight, the opening of vistas yet unseen, come about only by bold action and in desperate times.
So says Professor Horst Wittkowski, one of the first characters introduced in Robert A. Metzger's new dimensions-spanning novel, Picoverse. At the time he says it, he is in a crisis familiar to many a scientist-cum-mad-scientist from science fiction and horror: his work is so revolutionary that the established scientific community dismisses it out of hand. And like all such geniuses faced with the resulting pressure to get results, his solution is to engage in the most radical experiment possible, without regard to the consequences.
In this case, the work in question is the Sonomak, a device designed to create plasma and then compress that plasma until a controlled fusion reaction takes place, roughly by pointing 48 miniature particle accelerators at each other and turning them on full blast. Theoretically, this could solve the world's energy crisis and provide the underpinning for devastating weaponry. The funding, however, is scheduled to be cut, and seemingly the only people who believe in the project are Horst, Horst's sycophantic assistants, his estranged wife, Dr. Katie McGuire and just possibly his six-year-old son, Anthony, who while developmentally disabled seems to have an intuitive grasp on physics far surpassing that of the rest of humanity.
So Horst, following the logic of the observation quoted above, decides to make lemonade out of lemons and give a demonstration that one way or another will not soon be forgotten. He calls together potential funding people, including a very covert operative known only as Quinn, and gives the Sonomak its ultimate test. And let it merely be said that Horst's musing on "the opening of vistas yet unseen" turns out to be extremely prescient.
World after unpredictable world
From the summary given above, Picoverse might seem to be a bit by-the-numbers. Horst could be Dr. Jekyll or Dr. Frankenstein, and his wife, Katie, who believes in his genius but is alienated by his single-mindedness, might have been lifted from The Invisible Man and its considerable progeny. And Anthony, the strange child with adult understanding, has an even longer pedigree.
But from the beginning, author Robert A. Metzger shows a talent for unpredictability. Not only does the Sonomak go off in surprising directions, but so do the characters. Some who seemed mere background turn out to have vital importance, while others who at first seemed pivotal turn out to be far less than they appear. Picoverse always keeps you guessing.
And there's a lot to guess about: alternate universes, doppelgangers, weird physics, the origins of the universe, the course of human history. The shifting cast of characters must grapple with these ideas just to survive from day to day, and the reader knows only what the characters know, if that.
It's a lot to juggle, and though Metzger does keep all the balls in the air, sometimes the effort shows. The characters, although all interesting at first sketch, don't always talk or think in a believable or compelling way. Worse, some of their most frequently described personality traits are obvious setups for later plot twists. One example: Katie obsessively wears a virtual reality headset which bombards her with visual input. This fact is repeated every so often in case the reader has forgotten, but it is never explained. It doesn't seem to fit the little we know about her, and mere repetition doesn't make it more plausible; it just disrupts the pace of the story. And when the headset becomes important, the reader's first reaction is: "Oh, now I see why he wrote that in."
But while there's enough of this awkwardness to keep Picoverse from being a consistent page-turner, it remains a rewarding yarn with some new spins on the idea of alternate universes. And if you don't like where the story is going: wait 10 pages, it'll change.
