The Oppenheimer Alternative
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Narrated by:
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Josh Bloomberg
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By:
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Robert J. Sawyer
About this listen
Writing with “a sense of wonder that hasn’t prevailed since the days of Heinlein” (Books in Canada), best novel Hugo and Nebula Award winner Robert J. Sawyer brings you “a truly science-fictional work of alternate history” (S.M. Stirling).
While J. Robert Oppenheimer and his Manhattan Project team struggle to develop the A-bomb, Edward Teller wants something even more devastating: a weapon based on nuclear fusion - the mechanism that powers the sun. But Teller’s research leads to a terrifying discovery: by the year 2030, the sun will eject its outermost layer, destroying the entire inner solar system - including Earth.
After the war ends, Oppenheimer’s physicists combine forces with Albert Einstein, computing pioneer John von Neumann, and rocket designer Wernher von Braun - the greatest scientific geniuses from the last century racing against time to save our future.
Meticulously researched and replete with real-life characters and events, The Oppenheimer Alternative is a breathtaking adventure through both real and alternate history.
©2020 Robert J. Sawyer (P)2020 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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The Galactic Star Alliance has been alive and well for millions of Earth years. Hundreds of thousands of worlds and trillions of beings move across the many home worlds of the Alliance. This revelation invites many questions: How is faster-than-light speed travel possible, and could cohesive, interstellar civilizations exist without it? Is it conceivable to govern a coalition not of different countries but of different species?
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Dirstracting Sound effects.
- By adam on 11-12-20
By: Matthew Medney, and others
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The Stars, Like Dust
- By: Isaac Asimov
- Narrated by: Jon Lindstrom
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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His name was Biron Farrill and he was a student at the University of Earth. A native of one of the helpless Nebular Kingdoms, he saw his home world conquered and controlled by the planet Tyrann - a ruthless, barbaric Empire that was building a dynasty of cruelty and domination among the stars. Farrill’s own father had been executed for trying to resist the Tyrann dictatorship and now someone was trying to kill Biron. But why? His only hope for survival lay in fleeing Earth and joining the rebellion that was rumored to be forming somewhere in the Kingdoms.
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A Great Literary Master
- By Michael F. kloppel on 06-21-21
By: Isaac Asimov
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Impostor
- Alexander Gregory, Book 1
- By: LJ Ross
- Narrated by: Hugh Dancy
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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After an elite criminal profiling unit is shut down amid a storm of scandal and mismanagement, only one person emerges unscathed. Forensic psychiatrist Doctor Alexander Gregory has a reputation for being able to step inside the darkest minds to uncover whatever secrets lie hidden there, and soon enough he finds himself drawn into the murky world of murder investigation. In the beautiful hills of County Mayo, Ireland, a killer is on the loose. Panic has a stranglehold on its rural community, and the Garda are running out of time.
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Great beginning to a new series
- By Maine Knitter on 11-03-19
By: LJ Ross
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Gateway
- By: Frederik Pohl
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman, Robert J. Sawyer
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
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When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!
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A human-focused SF classic
- By Ryan on 12-05-13
By: Frederik Pohl
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A Most Clever Girl
- A Novel of an American Spy
- By: Stephanie Marie Thornton
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The year 1963: Reeling from the death of her mother and President Kennedy’s assassination, Catherine Gray shows up on Elizabeth Bentley’s doorstep demanding answers to the shocking mystery she just uncovered about her family. What she doesn’t expect is for Bentley to ensnare her in her own story of becoming a controversial World War II spy and Cold War informer.
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Loved it
- By Jasper Van Wyk on 10-20-21
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Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
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A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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The Gordian Protocol
- The Gordian Protocol, Book 1
- By: David Weber, Jacob Holo
- Narrated by: Gabriel Vaughan
- Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins
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Doctor Benjamin Schröder was far from a man of action. In fact, he was a history teacher - chairman of the Castle Rock University history department - and if his life wasn't perfect, it was close. Until, that is the discussion of his star student Elzbietá Abramowski's dissertation on Operation Oz, the Pacific Allies' invasion of Vladivostok, was brutally interrupted. The psychotic episode that turned his entire world upside down struck with absolutely no warning, and it was more terrifying than anything he should have been able to imagine.
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Trash
- By E on 05-08-19
By: David Weber, and others
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Anthem
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil.” Deep issues of conscience are explored in Ayn Rand’s dystopian tale of a man who dares to fight against a system that invades his very mind and identity.
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Triumphant! A beautiful molding of the mind.
- By Kari on 02-17-16
By: Ayn Rand
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The Game
- The Game Is Life, Book 1
- By: Terry Schott
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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What if life as we know it was just a game? What if instead of traditional schools, children learned by participating in a virtual reality simulation, one that allowed them to experience "life" from birth to death - multiple times? What if one player, on his final play, could change the world forever?
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A good concept mired by lazy writing.
- By Khada on 01-03-17
By: Terry Schott
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Executive Actions
- By: Gary Grossman
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 20 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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An assassin takes aim at a Presidential candidate during a primary stump speech. The instant he pulls the trigger, the outcome of the election is irrevocably changed. But Democrat Teddy Lodge, an upcoming media sweetheart, isn't killed. His wife is. As a result, Lodge emerges as the man to beat and the greatest threat to the incumbent President, Morgan Taylor.
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My highest possible recommendation for this novel!
- By Wayne on 08-12-16
By: Gary Grossman
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Main plot - Tiresome; Subplot - Cool!
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In 2059, two vastly different groups of people portrayed by the compelling trio of Brendan Fraser (Academy Award winner), Luke Kirby (Emmy Award winner), and Vanessa Sears (Dora Award winner) undergo cryonic suspension. While their bodies are frozen, their minds, still active and awake, are uploaded into a massive quantum computer. The first group are all astronauts, about to leave Earth on a one-way interstellar colonization mission. The second group consists of convicted murderers and volunteers who elect to serve their sentences in a virtual-reality prison.
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Poor writing- agenda piece
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Experimental psychologist Jim Marchuk has developed a flawless technique for identifying the previously undetected psychopaths lurking everywhere in society. But while being cross-examined about his breakthrough in court, Jim is shocked to discover that he has lost his memories of six months of his life from 20 years previously - a dark time during which he himself committed heinous acts.
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PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIE
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Far-Seer
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The Face of God is what every young saurian learns to call the immense, glowing object which fills the night sky on the far side of the world. Young Afsan is privileged, called to the distant Capital City to apprentice with Saleed the court astrologer. But when the time comes for Afsan to make his coming-of-age pilgrimage, to gaze upon the Face of God, his world is changed forever- for what he sees will test his faith...and may save his world from disaster!
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Definitely Original!
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In this Hugo-nominated novel, an alien walks into a museum and asks if he can see a paleontologist. But the arachnid ET hasn't come aboard a rowboat with the Pope and Stephen Hawking (although His Holiness does request an audience later). Landing at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the spacefarer, Hollus, asks to compare notes on mass extinctions with resident dino-scientist Thomas Jericho.
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Interesting book, very enjoyable narration
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The Terminal Experiment
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An experiment has gone terribly wrong. Dr. Peter Hobson has created three electronic simulations of his own personality. One will test life after death; another, immortality. The third one is the control unit. But now all three have escaped from Hobson's computer into the worldwide electronic matrix. And one of them is a killer.
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Incredible
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Thirty-eight years ago, Dr. Sarah Halifax earned worldwide fame by deciphering a radio transmission from an unknown intelligence reaching out from deep space. Now 87, Sarah receives news that, at long last, a new signal has been received, and her services are desperately needed once again.
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Main plot - Tiresome; Subplot - Cool!
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Poor writing- agenda piece
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PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIE
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Far-Seer
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The Face of God is what every young saurian learns to call the immense, glowing object which fills the night sky on the far side of the world. Young Afsan is privileged, called to the distant Capital City to apprentice with Saleed the court astrologer. But when the time comes for Afsan to make his coming-of-age pilgrimage, to gaze upon the Face of God, his world is changed forever- for what he sees will test his faith...and may save his world from disaster!
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Definitely Original!
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Flashforward
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A scientific experiment begins, and as the button is pressed, the unexpected occurs: everyone in the world goes to sleep for a few moments while everyone's consciousness is catapulted more than twenty years into the future. At the end of those moments, when the world reawakens, all human life is transformed by foreknowledge.
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How would you digest the fruits of knowledge??
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Novel alien first contact
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When a disabled spaceship enters Earth's atmosphere, seven members of the advanced Tosok race are welcomed by the world. Then a popular scientist is murdered, and all evidence points to one of the Tosoks. Now, an alien is tried in a court of law -and there may be far more at stake than accounting for one human life.
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Twenty years after the discovery of artificial wormholes launches Earth space exploration to unforeseeable heights, Starplex Director Keith Lansing investigates a mysterious vessel that soon threatens the station with intergalactic war.
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Tribute to Arthur C. Clarke
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1945
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In 1945, America has dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan has no choice but to surrender. But instead, the unthinkable occurs. With their nation burned and shattered, Japanese fanatics set in motion a horrifying endgame - their aim: to take America down with them.
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Repetitive Focus on Torture and Suffering
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End of an Era
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Paleontologist Brandon Thackery and his rival, Miles "Klicks" Jordan, fulfill a dinosaur lover's dream with history's first time-travel jaunt to the late Mesozoic. Hoping to solve the extinction mystery, they find Earth's gravity is only half its 21st-century value and dinosaurs that behave very strangely. Could the slimy blue creatures from Mars have something to do with both?
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Fascinating!
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Golden Fleece
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Aboard Argo, a colonization ship bound for Eta Cephei IV, people are very close - there's no other choice. So when Aaron Rossman's ex-wife dies in what seems to be a bizarre accident, everyone offers their sympathy, politely keeping their suspicions of suicide to themselves. But Aaron cannot simply accept her death. He must know the truth: Was it an accident, or did she commit suicide? When Aaron discovers the truth behind her death, he is faced with a terrible secret - a secret that could cost him his life.
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Just ok
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Red Planet Blues
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The name's Lomax-Alex Lomax. I'm the one and only private eye working the mean streets of New Klondike, the Martian frontier town that sprang up forty years ago after Simon Weingarten and Denny O'Reilly discovered fossils on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, where anything can be synthesized, the remains of alien life are the most valuable of all collectibles, so shiploads of desperate treasure hunters stampeded here in the Great Martian Fossil Rush.
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Bogart!
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Mindscan
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Jake Sullivan has cheated death: he's discarded his doomed biological body and copied his consciousness into an android form. The new Jake soon finds love, something that eluded him when he was encased in flesh: he falls for the android version of Karen, a woman rediscovering all the joys of life now that she too is no longer constrained by a worn-out body. Karen's son sues her, claiming that by uploading into an immortal body, she has done him out of his inheritance.
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Entertaining, but not Sawyer's Best
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Neanderthals have developed a radically different civilization on a parallel Earth. A Neanderthal physicist, Ponter Boddit, accidentally passes from his universe into a Canadian underground research facility. Fortunately, a team of human scientists, including expert paleo-anthropologist Mary Vaughan, promptly identifies and warmly receives Ponter. Solving the language problem and much else is a mini-computer, called a Companion, implanted in the brain of every Neanderthal. But it can't help his fellow scientist back in his world, Adikor Huld, when the authorities charge Adikor with his murder.
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Scicen Fiction Can Be Literature
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This is the story of Pierre Tradivel, a scientist, and his complex battle against deadly illness, and ex-Nazi war criminal still hiding in the U.S., a crooked insurance company, and a plot to make Pierre and his wife the victims of a bizarre genetic experiment. Frameshift is hard science fiction at its best, full of complications and neat surprises.
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Storyshift
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Identity Theft
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Identity Theft is a hard-boiled detective novella set on Mars. Cassandra and Joshua Wilkins are fossil hunters who have both recently transferred their minds into artificial bodies, but now Joshua has mysteriously disappeared. Cassandra must hire Alex Lomax, the only private detective on the red planet, to locate Joshua before sinister forces get to him.
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Hugo & Nebula nominated novella
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What listeners say about The Oppenheimer Alternative
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Gary Ingram
- 09-28-21
Awesome!
I highly recommend this book for anyone one enjoys the history of science. Great story! Great narration!
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- H AND A HOME REPAIRS
- 11-25-23
Wow
Very creative thought out story thoroughly enjoyed the book and the historical similarities. Great read
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- Lynda Engler
- 11-08-21
Reads like classic sci-fi
This novel was published in 2020 but reads like Classic sci-fi from the 50s. Perhaps it's because the story begins in 1936 and ends in 1967. Told completely chronologically, the first 4 hours of the tale takes us from Robert Oppenheimer's life as a college professor, through his involvement with the Manhattan Project, Hitler's death in 1945, and the dropping of The Bomb on Japan. It reads like a well-written biography of all the key players in the race for the A-bomb.
Then it takes a turn into alternative history. Edward Teller wants something more devastating: a weapon based on nuclear fusion - the mechanism that powers the sun. But Teller's research leads to a terrifying discovery: by 2030, the sun will eject its outermost layer, destroying the entire inner solar system, including Earth.
Interesting concept for a new book, and I enjoyed it, but not as much as previous Sawyer novels - I think because of the older time period. But if you love classic sci-fi, this is a modern "classic" you shouldn't miss.
I met Rob at a SF writer's conference in LA some years back and he's a great guy. I've enjoyed all of his novels, but my favorite - still - is Calculating God. Look it up, it's a 5-star read!
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5 people found this helpful
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- Chester Johnson
- 07-20-20
History with a twist!
The Oppenheimer Alternative by Robert J. Sawyer is an alternate history novel that follows the group of the world's greatest physicists that developed the nuclear fission bomb during WWII. But in this timeline, this group of intellectuals discover an impending doom for mankind even greater than the Axis powers, and after their creation ends WWII with nuclear fire in Japan, they set about trying to solve this new problem for humanity's sake.
All the characters in this novel are real historical individuals, and their separate personalities, personal drives, and clashing egos make an excellent back drop for a great scifi story. This novel surprised me with its ending, but it did end the best way possible after a bit of reflection. A solid novel, and historically accurate depictions and descriptions of people and history until the story takes its turn make for both a history lesson and a great alternative history scifi read. A solid 3 1/2 to 4 star read from Robert J Sawyer, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.
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- Kindle Customer
- 02-24-22
Brilliant
Extremely insightful. I remain impressed by the depth of this approach and its' believability factor.
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- AkarueKa
- 10-04-23
a glimpse into a history and a alternate future
from the moment I picked up my first Sawyer book, I have loved this author and this one was just as awesome as the rest. I was seriously impressed with the accuracy of historical fact and scientific information. and even tying it into theories about Crystal sun explosions due to micronova, . there is, a whole catastrophism theory about what caused the end of the ice age, in the younger dryas. and why there is a nano diamond, black mat of crystalline structures both, pretty much everywhere on this Earth and also on samples found on the moon. this sun, explosion theory, is an actual thing haha that I have studied for the last several years. when I saw what this book was about I said I had to read it. I follow on YT suspicious observers, space weather, and he has a whole series on catastrophism and micronova sun cycles, and sun cycles in general. if you're interested in this topic after you read this book I would check him out. the book actually left me wanting a second in the series and continuation, of the story. maybe we'll get lucky and Sawyer, will write one. excellent book if you're into science, history, The History of science, world war II history, deep state and pentagon projects, etc with a little twist this one is for you. the characters are all personalable believable, and interesting but all well known names in the history of the atomic age. very much enjoyed it I hope you do too.
ps, the narrator, is also great and does recognizable voices for all of the main characters. well done excellent listen
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- Cogit8tor
- 07-03-20
History Up Close and Personal--with a Twist
Robert J. Sawyer has delivered again with The Oppenheimer Alternative. The first section of the novel is a closeup view of the development of the atomic bomb, including the marvelous idiosyncrasies of famous scientists such as Fermi, Szilard, Teller, Feinman, Einstein, and more--plus key non-scientists like General Groves.
The second part of the book explores what might have happened after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where a mystery drives Oppenheimer and his colleagues to SAVE the world, much as the Manhattan Project permanently CHANGED the world.
Highly recommended.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Tonya
- 09-20-21
Disappointing 90% dry history
I really enjoyed several other books by this author, but the only part of the story that really caught my attention was the last 3-4 chapters.
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- Erwin valderramos
- 08-06-23
Optionheimer
There are other stories about Opie that may be better but I rather like the,” alternate history” of this one. It just drug on some and I don’t have interest in the not related film. Big fan of author but this one was ok.
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- Matthew
- 07-31-20
Fascinating....
Sawyer does it again! A totally original journey through the history of the dawn of the nuclear age. Sawyer and Bloomberg bring the giants of the day ( Einstein, Grove, Teller, Oppie! ) to life in this sprawling, unique and fun listen.
Revisionist history, with a hard sci-fi bend to it. For some reason, this offering really resonated with me. Hearing Bloomberg give voice to long passed historical characters was grand fun, and educational as well.
Highly recommended for a variety of listeners, including history buffs. Spend the credit and enjoy it!
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2 people found this helpful