Quantum Space

November 27, 2017
The disappearance of a Soyuz space capsule just as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere is the catalyst for a chain of increasingly mysterious events that drive the plot of this hard SF page-turner. Although presumed destroyed, the capsule is still broadcasting the voices of its three-man crew. That revelation sends White House scientific advisor Daniel Rice and national security advisor Christine Shea to Fermilab in Illinois, where Diastasi, an advanced scientific study “on the cutting edge of high-energy particle physics,” is using subatomic particles to push objects into fourth-dimensional quantum space. Moving at warp speed, the narrative accelerates along an intricate pathway of interconnected subplots involving corporate subterfuge, Chinese hackers, efforts to create a Star Trek–type human transporter, the reappearance of the space capsule minus its crew, and first extraterrestrial contact. Phillips’s characters are strictly from central casting for scientific thrillers, but they do their jobs to advance the complex plot. The esoteric scientific ideas on which the story hinges are made to seem credible, but their explanation through lengthy info-dumps sometimes makes this otherwise dazzling tale of weird science read like a tutorial in quantum physics.