The Collapsium

By Wil McCarthy

Book Overview

A MODERN SCIENCE FICTION CLASSIC FROM WIL MCCARTHY

SAVE THE SOLAR SYSTEM FROM THE ULTIMATE COLLAPSE

In the eighth decade of the Queendom of Sol, three commodities rule the day. The first is wellstone, a form of programmable matter capable of emulating almost any substance. The second is collapsium, a deadly crystal composed of miniature black holes, vital for the transmission of information and matter--including humans--throughout the Solar System. The third is the bitter rivalry between Her Majesty's top scientists.

Bruno de Towaji, famed lover and statesman, dreams of building an arc de fin, an almost mythical device capable of probing the farthest reaches of spacetime. Marlon Sykes, de Towaji's rival in both love and science, is meanwhile hard at work on a vast telecommunications project whose first step is the construction of a ring of collapsium around the Sun. But when a ruthless saboteur attacks the Ring Collapsiter and sends it falling into the Sun, the two scientists must put aside personal animosity and combine their prodigious intellects to prevent the destruction of the Solar System--and every living thing within it.

About The Collapsium:
"Ingenious and witty . . . as if Terry Pratchett at his zaniest and Larry Niven at his best had collaborated."--Booklist

"Fresh and imaginative. From a plausible yet startling invention, McCarthy follows the logical lines of sight, building in parallel the technological and societal innovations."--Science Fiction Weekly

"The future as McCarthy sees it is a wondrous place." --Publishers Weekly

" McCarthy] studs his narrative with far-out scientific concepts. . . . He certainly has a sense of humor."--The New York Times

"An ingenious yarn with challenging ideas, well-handled technical details, and plenty of twists and turns."--Kirkus

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1982124490
• ISBN13: 9781982124496
• Release Date: April 2020
• Publisher: Baen
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Surprisingly Engrossing and Entertaining

This is the story of the future and the people who molded it and lived it. Our hero is a genius who invented / worked with a product that is actually a miniaturized black hole. Although the science is a little fuzzy this led to the creation of the greatest of inventions, "The Fax", which could not only send a clone of a person to another location but simultaneously fixed all that was wrong with the copy. In other words, it guaranteed imortality. The world of the future is a matriarchy with a Virgin Queen (who just happens to love our hero). An arch-villian, a desolute madman with the charms of a playboy, sets on a course that will destroy the Solar System. It sounds outlandish but the way the future is presented, particularly with well stone and the amazing nano-technology (the descriptions are perfect), is truly amazing. The tone and setting "sound" plausible. Especially endearing was the way the hero allowed one robot to develop on his own.This was an unlikely hit, mostly underground, the story carried by word of mouth. I'd love to see this on the big screen but shudder at the horror that the editors would do - they would butcher the story, reduce it to a royal affair with about as much seriousness as a Mars candy bar. The success of this book generaged another by the author, a sequeal of sorts. I can't wait to find out what happens!

Fun

'Light' on the science and heavy on fiction but fun to read and that the most important part.

Ambitious and Enduring

This is a story with fabulous science, easily the equal of anything Larry Niven or Stephen Baxter have served up, or better. You can't swing a dead cat in this book without hitting another mind-blowing concept. Yet McCarthy's style is not the stiff deadpan of a NASA flight controller (which he is), but the romping satire of a Neal Stephenson or Salman Rushdie. It's an eerie combination. The language is deceptively simpler and more casual than "Bloom" or "Murder in the Solid State", but hiding behind it are layers of technical and human detail that lend this book the feel of a genuine classic.The world and characters are quirky and compelling. Never mind that the sun is going to be crushed into a black hole, I wanted to live here anyway. The author's love of the place is obvious and infectious. The story moves from court politics to murder to battles in space, heady sf fare with a hard strange twist, but the opening and closing scenes which bookend this action set it apart, as a work of genuine thought and depth. I've read it twice in six months, and still want more.

Entertaining solid sci fi

The Collapsium is McCarthy's best story to date. The story is lively and entertaining, with lots of new technology adequately explained for us non-physicists. I found the main character, Bruno, to be a more human and likeable protagonist than McCarthy's prior protagonists. All in all, an excellent story for readers who enjoy hard science fiction.

Plausible yet startling

How would people behave given the ability to "fax" themselves anywhere--incidentally eliminating mortality as if it were a bug in our operating system? What issues would arise that even they wouldn't expect? This is a book of questions, with a hard SF setting. Highly recomended.