Cosm

by Gregory Benford

Within an installation of ultra-high-energy scientific equipment, something goes wrong with a young physicist's ambitious experiment. It will soon be seen as a significant historical breakthrough, for the explosion has left something behind - a sphere made of nothing known to science.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Hard Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Novels

365 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Gregory Benford is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.

As a science fiction author, Benford is best known for the Galactic Center Saga novels, beginning with In the Ocean of Night (1977). This series postulates a galaxy in which sentient organic life is in constant warfare with sentient mechanical life.

Reviews

[Austin Bruce Hallock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cosm is a really cool science-fictional idea (5 stars) grafted onto a mediocre love story (2 stars) and flavored with a dollop each of ethnic and gender diversity ("E" for effort), all set against a realistic backdrop of contemporary academic strife and scientific process (4 stars). This tale would have worked much better as a novelette, but strung out to novel length, it seemed to drag a bit. I'm averaging it out to an overall 3-star rating.

[Bumpy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like a good, hard sci-fi yarn, but there are limits!

Reams of dry, abstruse physics theory - though certainly lending an air of authenticity to the concept - does not an entertaining read make. Reading this novel felt more like attending a lecture than it did entertainment.

Similarly, the minutiae of day-to-day life of university research staff and the culture they inhabit is not of sufficient interest to warrant the level of detail gone into by the author (who apparently has a personal axe to grind with legal and administrative).

Finally, too much is made of the fact that the main character is a black woman, and some of the characterisation and dialogue attributed to her during her quest for a hot date on the singles scene is truly, toe-curlingly cringe-worthy.

In short, you'd be better off just reading the blurb on the dust jacket; it tells exactly the same story but takes around 400 less pages to do so.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book! The idea is great, an unknown sphere showing up in a lab experiment, great. However, the rest of the story is pathetic. Why this male author thought he
could tell the story from the point of view of a black woman scientist, I have no idea. He couldn't.

[Theresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really, really wanted to like this book. The premise was interesting and new, and a few moments in the book were truly inspired. I suppose Benford wanted to tell the story of a sardonic young professor's personal growth over a backdrop of what was probably supposed to be a symbolic mysterious object.
The good parts couldn't outweigh the love story that never quite feels relevant, or the endless musings over race and gender that never seem to affect the plot as much as one would think they could. Those themes actually detracted from the science fiction parts of the story, and by the time I got halfway through the book I found myself just trying to get it done with so that I could move on to the next thing in my pile.

[Oscar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Durante un experimento en el Laboratorio Nacional de Brookhaven, donde está situado un colisionador de iones pesados, se produce un fallo que da lugar a una extraña y atípica esfera del tamaño de una pelota de baloncesto. El experimento estaba a cargo de la investigadora Alicia Butterworth, y esta decide guardarse el secreto y llevarse la esfera a California. Poco a poco, Alicia y su equipo irán descubriendo el extraño comportamiento respecto a la física de la esfera.

‘Cosmo’ (Cosm, 1998), del estadounidense Gregory Benford, es una novela de ciencia ficción hard que se centra sobre todo en el día a día de los físicos y administradores, como ya hiciera el autor en ‘Cronopaisaje’. El libro tiene un transcurrir bastante lento, y las partes especulativas no me han interesado excesivamente.

[David Rubenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun science fiction novel; my favorite type--something of a detective story. A new object suddenly just "shows up" in a particle accelerator, and much of the story is taken up in trying to figure out exactly what it is. Lots of laboratory and academic politics are stirred in, for good measure. While the main character always seems to do the wrong thing, it turns out, retrospectively, to have been exactly the "right thing" to do. As the author is a physicist, the explanations come across as quite believable (though improbable). The insights into a physicist's personality are very believable, and help the story immensely.

[Madison Bemis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book, but was disappointed. It did get more interesting as I got farther into it, but the beginning was dry. The plot seemed intriguing, but half of the time I was questioning why this white male author was writing from a black woman's point of view (which came off as over-the-top stereotypical). The physics was what kept me reading, but even that at times got to be too much.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gregory Benford does what he does best in this fine novel - show real scientists doing real science against a background of mind-boggling cutting-edge concepts. Alicia Butterworth is a black physicist struggling with being at the same time a poster girl for minority science and impostor syndrome. When an experiment colliding uranium atoms in the RHIC supercollider produces a strange metallic-looking sphere about a foot across after an explosion in the lines, she suspects it is important and smuggles it back to UC-Irvine from Brookhaven. After a lot of measurement and speculation with a theoretical physicist Max Jalon, they arrive at the astonishing deduction that they have a pinched-off piece of a daughter Universe - one where time runs millions of times faster than our own, and which stellar and universe evolution may be observed. The book is a real page-turner and even has the occasional graph (which should not turn you off) as this is the hardest of hard SF. It plays into my wheelhouse as a science nerd and is RECOMMENDED for anyone who loves this stuff! For others: your mileage may vary. :)

[Remo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novela de física escrita por un físico, y con todos los parabienes de dos grandes físicos (Dyson y Wheeler) en la portada. Y, aún así, no me ha enamorado. La protagonista es una física que crea un universo paralelo en un experimento con iones pesados en un acelerador de partículas. A partir de ese momento, su máxima preocupación será dedicar todo el tiempo posible a su estudio, mientras que la facultad, el laboratorio, la policía y la opinión pública actúan, opinan y enmerdan en general. Está muy bien descrito el ambiente académico y también el periodismo populista. Pero el libro como tal me resultó poco logrado. Falla la descripción de los personajes, que no resultan cercanos ni creíbles, y falla la velocidad de la acción, que en momentos se hace bastante lenta (la acción y la velocidad). No me llama, excepto la disquisición de la protagonista acerca de los alumnos que pretenden ser juzgados por su potencial y no por su rendimiento, que esa estuvo muy bien.

[Tessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t think I’ll be finishing this book. I didn’t really vibe with the first few chapters and I don’t really like how the main character is written… some of the descriptions felt kind of racist to me.

[Debbie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I grabbed a whole stack of books which my Dad was going to throw away. This was one of them. The science was interesting enough to make me curious to know how it ended, but the poor attempts at philosophy, religion, romance and even a lame "action" sequence that never went anywhere really made this a poor book. It was also a bit dated, being published in 1998. Oddly the story is set in 2005 - not sure why that would be. But some of the experiments done in the story, which I imagine were just theory at the time, were just recently attempted at the big superconducter in Switzerland. So, unless you are a huge (and I mean HUGE) fan of quantum physics and the creation of a new universe I would skip this book. I'm sure there's got to be a better novel out there about this topic.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh! What can I say? I was between books and desperate. I grabbed it off the library shelf just because I had liked Benford's Timescape book. This book is not that book in any shape or form. This is a one idea book, that idea being what would happen if you could create a universe in the lab. It's a great idea, the execution is not so good. Also, the main character is a black woman and while it might be possible for a white man to flesh out such a character, Benford is not that white man. There are also a lot of comments on sexism and racism that made me squirm. Maybe Benford was trying to say that gender and race shouldn't matter, but to me it came off as sounding like gender and race don't matter, but you only have to look as far as Ferguson to see that that is not the case yet.

[Robert Day · Rating 2 out of 5]

Left me feeling cheated. No aliens that I could see - just some hints. Then there's the way it all ended: far too suddenly. Did the author get bored? He could have written a hundred pages or so to tie it all up but instead quickly summarised it with two pages of newspaper headlines. Cheated.

There is more kitchen-sink drama than science fiction in this book. And not very realistic drama at that. Lack of detail about the protagonist's mind (a young(ish) woman), sketchy knowledge of the legal process, illogical treatment of cause and effect in the real world and an underestimation of the powers of law enforcement (and the FBI) combine to make this novel rather weak in my view.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

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[Jon]

Gregory Benford has written quite a bit of good hard science fiction over the years, and I've collected a number of his books. Cosm is an interesting story about a professor, Alicia, from UCI (Benford is a professor at University of California, Irvine) who is conducting particle physics experiments with uranium at Brookhaven. Something goes wrong, damaging her lab equipment, and an odd reflective sphere is formed in the accelerator after an explosion.

She conceals this anomaly from the staff at Brookhaven and takes the sphere back to UCI to study. It appears to be pretty much impervious to things like diamond drills, but has some reflective and refractive qualities in various wavelengths that give her some ideas about what it might be. She decides to enlist a theoretical physicist from CalTech, Max, to help her figure out what she's come up with, and he comes up with the idea that the sphere is one end of an Einstein-Rosen bridge between our universe and a brand new universe that was formed when the uranium particles collided in the lab.

The sphere turns out to be somewhat dangerous, as they find out when one of her lab assistants is burned to death by a sudden emission of radiation from the Cosm, as they have begun to call it. The universe at the other end of the bridge is evolving far more rapidly than our own, and the sphere provides Max and Alicia with a window of insight into our own universe's past and future.

Unfortunately, the story is only interesting for the technical details, really. I never really developed any great empathy with the characters, and their social interactions seemed contrived more in order to flesh out the framework of the cosmological theories that Benford wanted to talk about in this book, than to advance a real plot.

For example, Alicia's best friend, Jill, is described in one of the bar scenes as being very quirky, in a number of ways, but in specific she liked to carry a set of lockpicks with her. Southern California single gal with lockpicks? Later on in the story, when Alicia has to grab the Cosm and run from the authorities, Jill is there with her lockpicks to get them past a locked gate.

Alicia's father is a famous columnist in the story, but his only purpose seems to be to provide her with an introduction to a sharp lawyer when Brookhaven and the feds sue her for misappropriation of the sphere. Max is eventually given a shot at being Alicia's love interest, but his primary role is really just to provide the theoretical context for Alicia's particle physics discovery. There's quite a bit of what I'm sure is fairly accurate detail about university politics and funding, and the ambition of grad students, but most of the human interactions in this book really seem to me to fall flat.

Worth reading for the science in the science fiction, but don't expect a gripping story line.

[Rosco Betunada · Rating 5 out of 5]

On page 143 the author writes” “The ship of theory could set sail on tides of mathematical grandeur and hope alone, but only data could fill its sails.” This example is but one of many phrases/descriptions/summary of the science which has gone on (and unfolds FURTHUR in this book) -- the book is FULL of interpretations and allusions to and of and because of the scientific method – and at times (early on in the reading) one may wonder if there is a story actually being told. Of course, there is. Somewhat slow to unfold, but unfold it must – all the way to the conclusion. However, the story-telling is on a somewhat similar pace as the unfolding (revealing) of it’s “secrets” of the Object of this tale. Our (us on Earth) experiencing a complacent passage of time while, in the other universe, time passes at an increasingly exponential pace.

Seemingly coincidental, after having read COSM I also finished a ScientificAmerican article – “Escape from a Black Hole” (Dec. 2019). I would not be surprised if Dr. Benford is acquainted with the author, Dr. Steven Giddings (UC-Santa Barbara). Dr. Giddings posits that perhaps an improved quantum theory which, finally, can unify quantum mechanics and gravity, will shed light (so to speak) on the quandary of information being able to escape a black hole. Or not. Somehow semi-simultaneously reading these two separate pieces of literature seemed related.

For many of those who’ve read COSM, the physics described (in what I think is plausible detail) is somewhat overwhelming, daunting. I graduated with a B.S. in Physics “way back when” (1977), when the idea of fractional charge (particles with plus-or-negative electric charges less than the standard proton or neutron) was starting to gain traction. That, and un-related, the geological idea of plate-tectonics was just beginning to emerge and solidify out of the “fringe” adherents into the mainstream. Yeah, I digress … at one time I would have almost-fully-understood Benford’s physics explanations in this book. More and more I say to myself “I used to know that.” Still, interesting to have been (in my own very small way) involved with science during a revolutionary period, so to speak.

One of my Professors (Dr. Bill Fairbank), with whom I “partied” and sometimes hung-out with -- his father (same name, but Dr. F, Sr.) conducted 'early' experiments and discoveries involving the “quark”, and other topics in low-temperature physics, etc. Yeah, that’s OLD news, now. (And Dr. B might have known Dr. F, Sr. (Stanford)?)

Dr. B knows (and loves) “his stuff” and it was a pleasure to go along for this ride.

[Phyllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reminded me of the reasons I enjoy reading hard science fiction. It seemed smart, grounded in reality without smothering itself in it, and a joy to read. I even liked and, to a limited extent, identified with the characters. Wow, it's been a while.

Even though the book is two decades old (and I fear it's been hiding on my shelf for most of that period), it still rings up-to-date as long as you ignore the years. (At the time it was published, it was a near future book and now it's kind of "recent alternative past".)

In a physics experiment gone slightly askew, a small globe appears. Over a period of months, it becomes apparent that it seems to be another universe -- or at least a glimpse into one. Fascinating as that is, and I found it so, this book is as much about the physicist whose experiment brings the item about and her actions guarding and watching it with the help of graduate students and a theoretical physicist from a nearby university.

In fact, the book is almost as much about Dr. Alicia Butterworth (Butterworth? Really?), university politics, scientific infighting, politics, and the reactions of the American public as it is about the little universe itself. And that's what makes the book seem almost like a plain old novel, not just a science fiction novel.

[Steve Scanlan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alicia Butterworth is a particle physicist working at the University of California - Irvine. She has been given access to a supercollider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island and is conducting an experiment where particles of uranium are smashed together. The data gathered from her experiment will be studied firstly by Brookhaven and then passed onto her. With this in mind, when the experiment goes wrong she decides to take/steal what seems to have been created in the collider back to UCI for further investigation.

Much of the story is devoted to detailing the lot of a scientist. The political manoeuvring and inter-disciplinary infighting that occurs amongst them as well as the difficulties encountered in the social arena. The object created in the collider, named Cosm, and its study provides an interesting aspect to the book.

I found the first hundred pages or so a bit of a slog. It wasn't until the Cosm made its appearance that things started to pick up. I was tempted to put the book away, but persisted and found the second half of the story more enjoyable.

3.5 stars

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of what I call Benfords "University" books.
Alicia Butterworth is a physicist and produces a strange sphere

She smuggles it back to UC-Irvine from Brookhaven. This causes in-fighting among the two Unis.

With the help of Max Jalon, they find it is piece of a daughter Universe - one where (very conveniently) time runs millions of times faster than our own, and which stellar and universe evolution may be observed.

They other Uni makes one also, somewhat different to theirs and quite a lot of action commences.
It bit more unlikely than some but quite fun.

[Sara Best · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a bit slow to get going, but the last half of the book moved faster. It raises some good questions about the origin of the universe, but didn't quite pull off being genuinely philosophical science fiction. There was action and drama, but not enough to define it as either of those generas either.

[Jacob Chipman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The physics in this book were really engaging! Though at times it seemed like the author wasn't certain where he wanted to go with the story. Likewise, the ending felt a bit rushed, like there was a need to tie up loose ends. Overall, worth a look.

[Dani Alvarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basically an actual physicist wrote some detailed and interesting science fiction about how a wormhole could be made, what it would look like, what itd be made of, etc. there’s charts and everything in this book it really got me into #stem.

[S. Price · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was the ebook created by scanning a blurry photo of a copy of a Xerox? Because it is a MESS. Story's was fine enough, when I could pry it out from under the huge pile of typos.

[Yann · Rating 2 out of 5]

A quite confusing story, but there is a real effort to learn physics

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Science fiction as fiction about science... but not only. I'm impressed. And curious about how well others think Benford did with a contemporary black woman as the main character.

[Robert Whelan · Rating 4 out of 5]

More hard science from Benford. This one was much more interesting and better written. The ending was delivered as a series of headlines which seemed odd.

[Guido]

Why you might like it: Physics-forward cosmic saga; rigorous tone. Rubric match: not yet scored. Uses your engineering/rigor/first-contact/world-building rubric. Tags: hard-sf, galactic-center

[Kriegslok · Rating 3 out of 5]

To me this is a sort of pulp end version of Greg Egan. That's not to say I think Gregory Benford's writing is bad, just that the style is much easier going than Egan's (I've really struggled with Egan's work which I feel underqualified to read but still love). Cosm is the story of a young BAME experimental physicist and her first big experimental work using a particle accelerator. The experiment does not go to plan, in fact it goes with a bang producing results which draw her into close collaboration with a theoretical physicist. The book is mostly quite slow moving which did not bother me, it is quite physics heavy and some knowledge of physics probably helps to keep it interesting, towards the end it takes off briefly but Benford tries to retain an non sensationalist style. However, the book does feel very of its time and no doubt some people would question its content and style. This is the first of Benford's books I have read and I understand it is not rated as one of his best. I certainly like what he set out to do, even if I am not entirely convinced by the way he has done it. Certainly good for anyone who finds Egan completely inaccessible!

[Matt Maker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one a lot

[Don Stedman]

Loved it