The God Particle

by Richard Cox

There is a divine spark within us all. In one man, that spark is about to explode. American businessman Steve Keeley is hurtled three stories to the cold cobblestone street in Zurich. In the days that follow, a doctor performs miraculous surgery on Keeley, who wakes up to find that everything about his world has changed. He seems to sense things before they happen, and he thinks he’s capable of feats that are clearly impossible. It’s a strange and compelling new world for him, one he quickly realizes is also incredibly dangerous. Meanwhile at a $12 billion facility in hardscrabble North Texas, a super collider lies two hundred feet beneath the Earth’s surface. Leading a team of scientists, Mike McNair, a brilliant physicist, works to uncover one of the universe’s greatest secrets—a theoretical particle that binds the universe together, often called The God Particle. When his efforts are undermined by the man who has poured his own vast fortune into the project, McNair begins to suspect that something in his research has gone very, very wrong. Now, these two men are about to come together, battling mysteries of science and of the soul—and venturing to a realm beyond reason, beyond faith, perhaps even beyond life and death.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Novels

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Richard Cox was born in Odessa, Texas and now lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His latest novel, House of the Rising Sun, was published on July 7, 2020. Richard has also published The Boys of Summer, Thomas World, The God Particle, and Rift. Richard has also written for This Land Press, Oklahoma Magazine, and TheNervousBreakdown.com.

When he's not writing or reading, Richard loves spending time with his wife and two girls. And hitting bombs.

He also wrote this bio in third person as if writing about someone else. George likes his chicken spicy!

Reviews

[Richard Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book ever written in English. Plus the author is really handsome.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

The cover blurb was promising: particle physics, shifting realities and perceptions thereof, yer quantum, cod spirituality . . . all things that would tend to tailor-make a book for moi. And then the result was so depressingly disappointing!

US wheeler-dealer Steve Keeley, abroad on business, is thrown out of an upstairs brothel window in Zurich, but miraculously survives the fall thanks to, he's told, a brilliant surgeon. Only . . . only it seems he can now see and interact with the Higgs Field! Could he but tame this talent, he might be able to alter his surroundings at will, float through the air or see the future or read minds or . . . Certainly, this seems far better a deal than getting bit by a radioactive spider and becoming a power excretor.

Meanwhile, under the Texas desert a billionaire entrepreneur has succeeded in building a precursor to the Large Hadron Collider. I/c the science at the site is two-fisted, rock-jawed physicist Mike McNair, who's convinced the big breakthrough -- isolating the Higgs boson (or "God Particle") -- is just around the corner. Little does he know that twisted sociopath and fat assistant Larry Thing is out to get him and will even sabotage the project to further his vengeance. Larry's fury rises when poutingly, curvaceously intelligent local tv presenter Kelly Smith falls hook, line and sinker for the boss, because Larry is an avid local-tv-news-watcher and has been lusting after her for years. Sinister Swiss businessmen with a penchant for fondling white cats and uttering BROUWHAHA MISSTER BONT from time to time are lurking around somewhere, and . . .

Well, not everything in the preceding para is factually 100% accurate, but most of it is and it certainly represents the way I started feeling about this book before I'd got halfway through. When the characters aren't behaving stereotypically they're behaving like adolescents. Needless to say, one of the baddies is an ex-Nazi who harks back to the glory days under the Reich. Cox has difficulty depicting what the Higgs Field "looks" like, for the very good reason, of course, that we're dealing with an area of physical reality where commonsensical human understandings don't operate; yet, even granting this, even granting that his "descriptions" of quantum reality must necessarily be a matter of a lot of smoke and many, many mirrors, I still felt shortchanged: I was being offered something clunky and mundane and told it was really something wonderfully strange and incomprehensible.

The writing is, I guess, adequate; although the use of present tense seems pretentious in what is essentially a pulp tale; as with so many authors, Cox has occasional difficulties when dealing with past events within his present-tense narrative. (Note to writers using the technique: if you find yourself moving into the pluperfect, you're almost certainly screwing up.)

I'm perfectly prepared to believe that others will love this book. For me, though, it was as I say a bitter disappointment.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Advanced particle physics may not seem the vehicle for a novelist to address the conflict between science and religion. Yet that is exactly the approach Richard Cox uses successfully in The God Particle .[return][return]On the surface, The God Particle tells the stories of two men. Steve Keely is a California businessman who suffers a severe head injury when he falls three stories from a window while on a business trip in Switzerland. Mike McNair is a physicist who heads up the world's largest superconducting super collider in Texas and the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothesized subatomic particle known as "the God particle" because it is believed to be the component of a field through which all other particles move. (In a concluding note, Cox gives credit to a similarly titled work by Leon Lederman, the 1988 Nobel laureate in physics, as the inspiration for this book).[return][return]Yet The God Particle is more than a fiction-based exploration of theoretical physics. Whether we go back to Galileo's conflict with the Catholic Church or today's debate over teaching evolution or "intelligent design," it seems we perpetually face certain core questions. Do we look to science or religion to try to understand the essence of life? Is there an area where the two converge and become indispensable to each other in addressing that question?[return][return]Cox explores these issues in a way that does not make this a pondering philosophical tome. Not only is the work straightforward, it is evenhanded and balanced. Still, it is far from flawless. About a third of the way through, I knew generally how and why McNair's and Keely's paths would cross. There also seems to be a few too many diversions into sexual matters, whether it be obsessions or encounters. For the most part, they do not add to the story and seem more titillation than to advance the story.[return][return]Overall, though, The God Particle is an enjoyable read that raises -- and encourages the reader to think about -- such issues as belief (whether in religion or science), fate, and the existence of a common core to life and the universe.[return][return]Originally posted at http://prairieprogressive.com/?p=417

[Sara Gamble · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic, smart book. The real gems are in the details - and not just the discussions on particle physics. Which really is what it has to be. These are all theories and a number of them are touched on and some expanded. There's a real inside look at what it's like to be a news anchor - seriously female anchors actual have to put up with all those things described in this book. There's romance and treachery and conspiracies and it all sticks together. Not single detail was dropped from beginning to end. It was complete. By far my favorite book from the author so far.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An look inside the lives of fictional physicists involved with a super collider and some interesting what ifs.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

fun read. Intriguing physics, especially toward the end.

[Esmp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I think the end was a little bit exaggerated, It was a very nice reading.

[Robyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

While parts of it were interesting, it was difficult to feel involved because the story jumped back and forth between the two main protagonists. Just felt disjointed.

[Brandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. Wish there was less Larry though. His character didn't need that much detail.

[Henry · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot is quite incoherent and I didn't quite get the ending. Throughout reading the book I had a light curiosity to keep reading because physics is a topic that interests me. Unfortunately this was not a page-turning experience for me. The whole book seems a hodgepodge of related but incoherent subplots that lacks a main theme. The whole book just reads like prose.

I usually don't care much about character development (as long as the book is hard to put down). But the characters in The God Particle just seemed so one-dimensional.

The descriptions of human behaviors "behind the scene", of a colleague, a crush, a stalker, a boss, a girlfriend, etc are quite accurate, to the credit of the author.

This is my first book of Cox. Would I read his other works? Maybe. I want to give The Boys of Summer a try.

[Joey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.8 stars. I'm not sure why it has the low-ish rating it has. I wasn't bored with any of the scientific information drops, the relationships and connections of the characters kept my interest. Sure there were a few questions left, but overall I enjoyed it.

[Paul Grant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well that was hardwork!

[short queen 👑 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me encantó!
Lo re recomiendo creo que es de uno de esos libros fascinantes en los cuales mientras que lees aprendes distintas cosas.
:)

[Gaby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Me interesó la trama de este libro ya que había escuchado antes alguna que otra teoría acerca de la Partícula Divina, pero el desarrollo de la historia no alcanzó mis expectativas. Los personajes no me llegaron demasiado, a excepción de Mike, y creo que el desenlace fue demasiado apresurado a pesar de ser un libro algo extenso.

Me gustaron las teorías y terminologías usadas, lo que denota que el autor investigó mucho antes de escribirlo, pero en ocasiones hacían que la historia se volviera muy complicada y difícil de seguir. Tuvo sus buenos momentos, pero aún así tuve que obligarme a terminarlo.

En una época de mi vida en que no me encanta ningún libro que leo, éste fue sólo otro gran "meh..."

[Alexa Logan · Rating 1 out of 5]

La premisa es buena, pero la realización...

En primer lugar, es demasiado obvio que el autor no hizo ninguna clase de investigación antes de escribir este libro.
Nadie, aún si es una chica esquelética viviendo casi exclusivamente a base de yogurth, considera un sándwich una comida grande, elaborada y extravagante.
El climax de la historia fue decepcionante, y hay un millón de maneras mejores de hacer notar que alguien es un psicópata que hacerlo comer sus mocos... eso es simplemente asqueroso, e insistir tanto en ese detalle y de manera tan gráfica sólo consigue que la imagen se quede en la mente del lector con mucha más claridad que cualquier indicio de trama o intriga que pueda haber en el libro.

[Marlene Debo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book, but I thought there would be more material about the convergence of science & spirituality around the Higgs Boson god particle. There was some satisfying discussion toward the end. Mostly a suspenseful who did what & where's reality & what do the two plot lines have to do with each other kinda book.

[Vanna Har · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes u think about the universe :) SUPER ULTRA GOOD!

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible. One of the stupidest books I've ever read. I finished it, hoping there might be some redeeming quality to it but it was just a big disappointment.

[Paolo Latini · Rating 2 out of 5]

ma per piacere.