This fast-paced romp through multiple manmade universes from Metzger (Quad World) will appeal to hard SF fans who like their science served straight up. In 2007, a team of physicists working on fusion power stumble onto a way to create new, smaller universes—picoverses—which replicate everything in our universe but smaller. After a disastrous test of the Sonomak machine, the mysterious Alexandra takes over the project. She has her own priorities, which include escaping her bosses into one of the picoverses, and she needs researchers Katie, Horst and Jack to execute her plan. Naturally, things go awry, and Katie and company find themselves exiled to a picoverse that duplicates Earth in the 1920s. The Sonomak is a reality there, too—though made with vacuum tubes and run by researchers who include Werner Heisenberg and Albert Einstein. This is just the start of a race through a number of picoverses, as our heroes attempt to get home and defeat the nonhuman Alexandra. Alternate realities collide, with the very fate of Earth and the universe at stake. The preponderance of characters with superhuman powers gets old, as does the author's holding back crucial information about events and then springing it on us just in time to save the day. But the book hangs together thematically—turns out saving the universe is not about manipulating the fabric of space-time, but about manipulating someone who can manipulate the fabric of space-time—and the happy ending satisfies. Agent, Richard Curtis. (Mar. 5)
Forecast:Supportive blurbs from the likes of Gregory Benford, F. Paul Wilson and Charles Sheffield should help, but some readers may be put off by the author's over-reliance on deus ex machina.
