SF Book Review: “The Oppenheimer Alternative” is a 💣 blast to read
By: Ian F. Darwin
Tags: SF, World War II, Atomic Bomb, Oppenheimer

Image credit Jack W. Aeby, July 16, 1945. Public domain.

Pssst. Want to know how to make a bomb? A nuclear one? Robert J. Sawyer’s saga starts with “the boys behind the bomb,” the real-life scientists who invented “nukes”, and leads into a vastly greater catastrophe for humanity.

We tend to think of those 20th-Century physicists in the abstract, as scientific super-genius types; we little know or care for their personal lives, their humanity, their loves and losses, or their moral dilemmas. In first half of this book, Sawyer reanimates these people, showing their personality conflicts (many), their awkward love lives, and some of the “office politics” of the story arc. It follows the path from US President Truman’s decision to build the bomb, to the founding of Los Alamos (previously a desert, now a National Research Lab), the choice of J. Robert Oppenheimer as its first Director, and the various projects started there. Of course it was a research center, so not all the projects panned out. But as we know they did invent the atomic bomb, tested it on US soil, and the US used it on Japanese cities — twice —a massive atrocity justified at the time on the grounds that it would end World War II, saving lives on both sides (but primarily American) compared to continuing the fight island-to-island. Of course it also brought a beginning to the atomic age and the cold war.

Working in the computer field I’ve seen software contributions from many universities, research labs, and so on. This work touches on the origin stories of places whose names I’ve heard and whose code I’ve used but never visited nor known much about, such as Los Alamos (of course), Lawrence Livermore Labs, Oak Ridges National Lab (OK, I got to visit that one once), or the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton.

The second half of the story smoothly continues the lives of the scientists in speculative science fiction. What if, after the war was over and before the scientists all went back to research and teaching jobs, they discovered an impending natural phenomena that would simply erase all life on planet Earth, down to the last molecule…​ in the middle of the next century? I won’t tell you what it is, but if you’ve read all of Sawyer’s other novels you might find it vaguely familiar. Part of Sawyer’s skill is in how he bends the arc smoothly from the real story to the science fiction story, fusing real-world events into the saga of how the scientists (mostly) worked together, once again under Oppenheimer’s leadership, towards saving humanity from destruction.

Interestingly, everybody mentioned by full name in the book is a real person. As of the time of publication in 2020, all but one of them (Oppenheimer’s son, born 1941) had passed away. There are a lot of players! To help you keep them straight, there is a dramatis personae at the front. It’s four pages, with one or two lines for each person. And to show that he’s done his research (on the off chance that you didn’t stumble to that conclusion while reading the tale!), as well as to feed your curiosity on any of the matters treated in the work, there are ten pages of bibliography at the end. The book is hard to put down once you start — Sawyer’s writing style makes sure of that.

Reading this book has opened my mind to a broad swathe of science history that I was largely unaware of. I tended not to pay attention to books about “The Manhattan Project” (which wasn’t located in Manhattan anyway). You can read the histories of the people and projects online at the Atomic Heritage Foundation and, of course, at Wikipedia, as well as the many books listed in the bibliography. But you should definitely read Sawyer’s story first.

The ending is rather stunning, if a little bit deus ex machina, which is forgivable as it does flow from the other-wordly intellects of some of the world’s leading physicists. No spoilers, but I had expected something a bit more, well, surprising. Still, the final chapter does neatly tie up all the loose ends. I’d rate The Oppenheimer Alternative a 9 out of 10, and recommend it to anyone with any kind of interest in science or history. Or both.

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Publication details: By Robert J Sawyer. Red Deer Press, Markham, ON. 2020. ISBN 9781647100131.

You can get the book at most public libraries, or order it from your local bookstore or online at Bookshop (affiliate link) or other online booksellers.