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Sex, Rain, and Cold Fusion
Prepare to meet physicist David Oster, a big thinker, a charming cad who flees Caltech and his three girlfriends for the Pacific Northwest, pastoral fantasy firmly in hand. Whatever will he do with all that rain, yet another beautiful woman, and several crazy physicists intent on his ruin? Obviously he needs to discover some entirely new physics principle, as yet unnamed, but can he deliver?
- GenresFiction
348 pages, Paperback
First published November 11, 2013
1 person is currently reading
158 people want to read
About the author
A.R. Taylor
3 books26 followersA. R. Taylor is a playwright, humorist, and fiction writer. Early on, she turned her Ph.D. thesis into a book called Male Novelists And Their Female Voices: Literary Masquerades, and it went on to become a finalist for the Henry Murray Award at Harvard. She has published in The Cynic Magazine, The Pedantic Monthly, The Berkeley Insider, Red Rock Review, and Rosebud, among others. In addition, her stories have been featured in the New Short Fiction Series, and she was head writer on two Emmy award-winning series for public television. Other awards include the Writers Foundation of America Gold Statuette for Comedy, the NBC New Comedy Writer awards, and the De Golyer Prize in American Studies. Oddly enough, Taylor has also performed at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 8, 2013
I loved this book for Ms. Taylor's clever use of language and the fact I couldn't put the book down until I knew exactly what happened to these crazy, original and engaging characters.
January 23, 2014
Sex, Rain, and Cold Fusion is a pleasant and entertaining story about David Oster, a research scientist who moves to the northwest to work at a university and pursue his work on discovering a fifth element. Unfortunately for David, he is quickly pulled away from his work as he becomes entangled in a strange, convoluted crime. He is stuck dealing with co-workers bent on sabotage, a wide range of friends and acquaintances who are constantly creating drama around hook ups and cheating, and trying to solve a case of poisoning. The bulk of this story is about David trying to solve the crime, which sometimes gets a bit drawn out and convoluted but is usually pretty entertaining.
January 21, 2014
This book fits into the "clever" and "hoot" genres and/or categories. It rocks and rolls from beginning to end with characters, events and language usage that are off-the-scale nuts.
In many ways, the plot--which is deliciously tangled--doesn't matter because we're all along for the ride and where we end up doesn't matter. . .it's one of those "the journey is more important than the destination" kind of books, er, in a wry way.
My only cautionary words are these: reading this book is rather like eating a cake that's 99% frosting. You feel guilty but you keep doing it anyway.
In many ways, the plot--which is deliciously tangled--doesn't matter because we're all along for the ride and where we end up doesn't matter. . .it's one of those "the journey is more important than the destination" kind of books, er, in a wry way.
My only cautionary words are these: reading this book is rather like eating a cake that's 99% frosting. You feel guilty but you keep doing it anyway.
December 16, 2013
Hilarious! It's so rare that I find a book this funny, intelligent, honest and wise. The unreliable narrator kept me turning pages and flagging line after memorable line. At times the plot seemed silly, but the characters feel so authentic and endearing, I accepted their Three Stooges approach to sleuthing. Rarely do I recommend a book so enthusiastically to so many friends. Fans of Lynne Hinkey ("Marina Melee" and "Ye Gods") and Michele Riccio ("I Do Over" and "Sex, Lives and Dental Chairs") would love this novel.
January 13, 2014
*I received this book from through the Goodreads giveaway program*
Poor David Oster. He sees a new job in Washington state as a perfect escape from his complicated romantic life in Southern California, but is woefully unprepared for the eccentricities of his new neighbors and fellow coworkers. Maybe it's the seemingly endless rain that makes everyone nuts? This book will keep you wondering, "What on earth is going on with these people?"
Poor David Oster. He sees a new job in Washington state as a perfect escape from his complicated romantic life in Southern California, but is woefully unprepared for the eccentricities of his new neighbors and fellow coworkers. Maybe it's the seemingly endless rain that makes everyone nuts? This book will keep you wondering, "What on earth is going on with these people?"
January 8, 2014
This book was ridiculously weird and so much fun to read. The characters, with all their flaws, were quirky and lovable. Part love story, part mystery, I was so confused until the very end - but in a good way. I had to keep reading to find out what happens and everything that happens along the way was hilarious and charming - reminiscent of a Shakespeare comedy. I also loved that it takes place in the Pacific Northwest, inaccuracies aside.
December 27, 2013
The title best describes this book: Sex(sex), Rain (Seattle area), and Cold Fusion (physics). A wonderful romp. I wanted it to never end.
July 12, 2014
One of the smartest, funniest, most upbeat novels I’ve ever read, wise and insightful–and it’s an indie novel! The author keeps a low profile: no social media presence, i.e. no twitter of facebook (as of March 2014, anyway). **NEWS FLASH: today, July 11, 2014, I found Anne Taylor’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ARTaylorAuthor and Twitter too!! https://twitter.com/BallGirl1 .
Fans of The Neanderthal’s Aunt (another indie novel) by Dr. Gina DeMarco are sure to love Taylor’s humor too.
The review I wrote for Perihelion Science Fiction, February 2014, was aimed at a science fiction audience. In truth, I’m not sure this novel belongs in the science fiction genre at all, but then, it’s often not clear to me how other novels marketed as science fiction get away with the label.
The title, I confess, was the first thing that drew me to “Sex, Rain and Cold Fusion.” Taylor’s ability to make me love a maddeningly flawed protagonist is what kept me reading to the end and wishing for more.
The trope of the unreliable narrator is employed to great comic success with keen, authentic insights into human nature. If science fiction’s first concern is humanity, this novel scores. From the first line, I was smitten. Chapter 1: Like many of David Oster’s bad decisions, his escape from California to the state of Washington would be justified with an orgy of lies. The worse the decision, the more he liked to sugarcoat it to his critics, and in this instance, he prepared himself for a virtuoso performance.
A quick synopsis may be in order: David Oster is a brilliant physicist in search of a more lucrative job. He wants the financial backing of a professorship to pursue his scientific experiments but not the burden of trying to explain science to young blockheads. He flees his current post and three girlfriends for the Pacific Northwest, vowing to avoid undergraduates and any more romantic entanglements. Quantum entanglements would be welcome, if he ever gets funding to get down deep in the ocean to conduct his experiments and find the fifth dimension.
His new life in a small college town in Washington is clouded by perpetual rain, a demented boss, a commission to spy on his philandering neighbor, attempted murder, torrential rains inundating his rental home, demands that he teach a class after all (but they promised he wouldn’t have to!), a Latvian neighbor who distrusts all Russians, especially the mysterious equestrian with long white hair and a great figure who sabotages David’s vow to celibately engage in scholarly pursuits, more rain punctuated by occasional moments of sunshine, a confusing love triangle—more like a quadratic of unknown dimensions—involving several beautiful women and their lovers, and occasional moments of gray sky minus the rain. With several crazy physicists imploding into his social and professional life, David needs to discover some entirely new physics principle, as yet unnamed, before Heinrich the dog and a herd of horses charge onto the university’s expensive new basketball court and do real damage to David’s reputation.
David’s sleuthing for his allegedly insane boss is more the slapstick variety of The Three Stooges than of a scientist, but Taylor convinces me this is entirely plausible. Every character is believable but eccentric and well-drawn. Taylor’s mastery of deep point of view, along with her unerring observation of human folly, kept me turning pages. I love David’s surprise and panic when a peer approaches him with questions he shouldn’t be in any position to ask. How did he know he (David) was even pursuing the fifth force? He had mentioned it only once in an earlier paper and in a very guarded way, calling it merely “an unknown force.” Likewise, I love David’s frequent bouts of disillusionment: … he thought then and there of abandoning his research, despite the good words of his benefactor. Who really cared? Maybe people wouldn’t want to know that another force existed in the universe. Even though it would affect fundamental physics, it would have no practical application whatsoever. And that reminds me of another favorite (but ouch-inducing) line: "No non-scientist, no matter how bright, actually wants to talk physics, nor can they."
So many, many lines in this book are worth sharing, but it would be better if everyone just read the book. To grasp the subtlety of the humor, it’s necessary to view the whole.
A fellow book critic told me, “Science fiction writers generally don’t do character and deep emotion well, and romance writers don’t even understand what science fiction is—even when they write romantic science fiction. Writers who can do both are hard to find, but tend to do well because they hit the audience that actually gives a damn about this stuff.” I’ve said almost nothing about the romance in this novel but the full title is a sort of disclosure in and of itself: “Sex, Rain and Cold Fusion: The Physics of Modern Love.” The human component wins me over, scene after scene. David has a family history of emotional dysfunction, which never presents as info-dumps or flashbacks, but seamlessly factors into the chaos of his life. He panics when Viktor gets emotional: David would have to encourage him, be “supportive,” in that particular way that he loathed, and when Viktor dares to weep,David didn’t know what to say but felt more powerfully than ever a certain blank in his personality, as if there were a tablet in his brain upon which nothing had been written. His family had no words for sorrow, that was it. Beyond sadness, they burned with a fiery rage that blackened them from inside.
In the end, David and two unlikely partners do get down deep into the ocean, and something is, in fact, discovered. (No, not love; it’s something scientific and new.) I have to say this is one of the most gratifying endings in all of contemporary fiction. Call me a sequel-hater, but I would welcome a next-in-a-series about David’s oceanographic physics discoveries. However, this jewel of a novel comes with true closure, whose departure (in deference to serials) Jack Williamson lamented at the turn of the century (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November, 1999).
A.R. Taylor is one of the most incisive and witty writers of our time. She nails the human condition the way all good science fiction authors should. She captures all our flaws, brilliance, self-delusions, failed powers of observation and deduction, and our ultimate triumph over thwarted hopes. She gets the science right (as far as I know, anyway). Taylor masters every category of writing fiction, from character, dialogue, point of view, narrative pace, conflict, irony, and well-crafted prose, to earning the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. I look forward to more novels from her, and must go find her short stories and screen plays.
Fans of The Neanderthal’s Aunt (another indie novel) by Dr. Gina DeMarco are sure to love Taylor’s humor too.
The review I wrote for Perihelion Science Fiction, February 2014, was aimed at a science fiction audience. In truth, I’m not sure this novel belongs in the science fiction genre at all, but then, it’s often not clear to me how other novels marketed as science fiction get away with the label.
The title, I confess, was the first thing that drew me to “Sex, Rain and Cold Fusion.” Taylor’s ability to make me love a maddeningly flawed protagonist is what kept me reading to the end and wishing for more.
The trope of the unreliable narrator is employed to great comic success with keen, authentic insights into human nature. If science fiction’s first concern is humanity, this novel scores. From the first line, I was smitten. Chapter 1: Like many of David Oster’s bad decisions, his escape from California to the state of Washington would be justified with an orgy of lies. The worse the decision, the more he liked to sugarcoat it to his critics, and in this instance, he prepared himself for a virtuoso performance.
A quick synopsis may be in order: David Oster is a brilliant physicist in search of a more lucrative job. He wants the financial backing of a professorship to pursue his scientific experiments but not the burden of trying to explain science to young blockheads. He flees his current post and three girlfriends for the Pacific Northwest, vowing to avoid undergraduates and any more romantic entanglements. Quantum entanglements would be welcome, if he ever gets funding to get down deep in the ocean to conduct his experiments and find the fifth dimension.
His new life in a small college town in Washington is clouded by perpetual rain, a demented boss, a commission to spy on his philandering neighbor, attempted murder, torrential rains inundating his rental home, demands that he teach a class after all (but they promised he wouldn’t have to!), a Latvian neighbor who distrusts all Russians, especially the mysterious equestrian with long white hair and a great figure who sabotages David’s vow to celibately engage in scholarly pursuits, more rain punctuated by occasional moments of sunshine, a confusing love triangle—more like a quadratic of unknown dimensions—involving several beautiful women and their lovers, and occasional moments of gray sky minus the rain. With several crazy physicists imploding into his social and professional life, David needs to discover some entirely new physics principle, as yet unnamed, before Heinrich the dog and a herd of horses charge onto the university’s expensive new basketball court and do real damage to David’s reputation.
David’s sleuthing for his allegedly insane boss is more the slapstick variety of The Three Stooges than of a scientist, but Taylor convinces me this is entirely plausible. Every character is believable but eccentric and well-drawn. Taylor’s mastery of deep point of view, along with her unerring observation of human folly, kept me turning pages. I love David’s surprise and panic when a peer approaches him with questions he shouldn’t be in any position to ask. How did he know he (David) was even pursuing the fifth force? He had mentioned it only once in an earlier paper and in a very guarded way, calling it merely “an unknown force.” Likewise, I love David’s frequent bouts of disillusionment: … he thought then and there of abandoning his research, despite the good words of his benefactor. Who really cared? Maybe people wouldn’t want to know that another force existed in the universe. Even though it would affect fundamental physics, it would have no practical application whatsoever. And that reminds me of another favorite (but ouch-inducing) line: "No non-scientist, no matter how bright, actually wants to talk physics, nor can they."
So many, many lines in this book are worth sharing, but it would be better if everyone just read the book. To grasp the subtlety of the humor, it’s necessary to view the whole.
A fellow book critic told me, “Science fiction writers generally don’t do character and deep emotion well, and romance writers don’t even understand what science fiction is—even when they write romantic science fiction. Writers who can do both are hard to find, but tend to do well because they hit the audience that actually gives a damn about this stuff.” I’ve said almost nothing about the romance in this novel but the full title is a sort of disclosure in and of itself: “Sex, Rain and Cold Fusion: The Physics of Modern Love.” The human component wins me over, scene after scene. David has a family history of emotional dysfunction, which never presents as info-dumps or flashbacks, but seamlessly factors into the chaos of his life. He panics when Viktor gets emotional: David would have to encourage him, be “supportive,” in that particular way that he loathed, and when Viktor dares to weep,David didn’t know what to say but felt more powerfully than ever a certain blank in his personality, as if there were a tablet in his brain upon which nothing had been written. His family had no words for sorrow, that was it. Beyond sadness, they burned with a fiery rage that blackened them from inside.
In the end, David and two unlikely partners do get down deep into the ocean, and something is, in fact, discovered. (No, not love; it’s something scientific and new.) I have to say this is one of the most gratifying endings in all of contemporary fiction. Call me a sequel-hater, but I would welcome a next-in-a-series about David’s oceanographic physics discoveries. However, this jewel of a novel comes with true closure, whose departure (in deference to serials) Jack Williamson lamented at the turn of the century (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November, 1999).
A.R. Taylor is one of the most incisive and witty writers of our time. She nails the human condition the way all good science fiction authors should. She captures all our flaws, brilliance, self-delusions, failed powers of observation and deduction, and our ultimate triumph over thwarted hopes. She gets the science right (as far as I know, anyway). Taylor masters every category of writing fiction, from character, dialogue, point of view, narrative pace, conflict, irony, and well-crafted prose, to earning the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. I look forward to more novels from her, and must go find her short stories and screen plays.
December 19, 2013
This is a fun book, more of a comedy-romance instead of romantic comedy. The title makes it sound much more lascivious than it is.
The story centers around research scientists at a university. While you don't need to be into science to enjoy the book, it adds a little extra something. Almost all the characters (and there are many) are quite goofy in their own unique way. The only flaw I found (and a minor one at that) is that the story seemed to be disjointed at times, with scenes and circumstances jumping from one place to another without a connection, at least one I could identify.
All in all, a fun, light read.
The story centers around research scientists at a university. While you don't need to be into science to enjoy the book, it adds a little extra something. Almost all the characters (and there are many) are quite goofy in their own unique way. The only flaw I found (and a minor one at that) is that the story seemed to be disjointed at times, with scenes and circumstances jumping from one place to another without a connection, at least one I could identify.
All in all, a fun, light read.
September 1, 2014
Very bizarre, fantastical story set in the Northwest. The main character, David, is a rather boring, self-centered scientist who studies the physics of waves. The story is so preposterous, that it is mildly amusing at times, but mostly I found it outlandish and rather boring. Ms. Taylor surely captures the weather and mind set of those who inhabit the Pacific rain forest.
December 17, 2013
Here's another one I gave up on. I was actually surprised to see this was written by a woman because it felt very much like a guy book. I only read the first two chapters, though....
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews