Picoverse

Picoverse, Robert A. Metzger, Ace Books, 2002

Set in present-day America, Katie McGuire and her ex-husband Horst Wittkowski are nuclear physicists working on a potential fusion generator called a sonomak. Right after their federal funding is eliminated, they are approached by Alexandra Mitchell, a mysterious woman with unlimited resources, to keep the project going.

It seems that the sonomak can be used to create new universes, copies of this universe but much smaller, called picoverses. Alexandra is actually a super-robot who wants to escape her masters, the Makers, in one of these new universes. In another of these universes, Anthony, Katie and Horst's young son and super-prodigy, has grown into an immortal and powerful being called Alpha. He enters this universe to destroy it.

In another universe, in the 1930s, America is on the verge of being conquered by a Soviet-German alliance. The east and west coasts are already in foreign hands due to some well-placed nuclear weapons. The only thing keeping the rest of America from falling into enemy hands are things like particle beam weapons to shoot down enemy aircraft, developed by Nikola Tesla and a teenaged Anthony. Albert Einstein has become an anti-science religious zealot, mostly due to his wife, Nadia, who is an exact duplicate of Alexandra Mitchell. The only stars at night are from the other planets, because the whole universe is the size of the solar system.

This novel is based on very high-level physics, so parts of it will go right over the head of the average reader. The rest of the novel is excellent. It does really well in the "mind-blowing" department. Get past the science, and the reader will have plenty to think about, while staying involved in the book. Well worth reading.