Sex, Rain, and Cold Fusion
"An unpredictable, winningly bizarre academic satire." -- Kirkus Reviews"In David Oster, she crafts a perfect, hapless Everyman who faces academic jockeying, lovelorn antics and even an attempted murder with beleaguered charm and an endless supply of snarky one-liners and sardonic observations. " -- Kirkus Reviews "Taylor's  funny, meticulously controlled fiction debut opens with 30-year-old hotshot physicist David Oster finding himself fed up with teaching physics to undergraduates ("It was pitiful when a physicist tried to tell eighteen-year-olds how a ball rolls off a table") and eager to trade his California Institute of Technology postdoc for something different, something involving pure research . . . Taylor so skillfully blends David Lodge-style academic farce with Thomas Pynchon-style weird science . . . that it's impossible to spot the dividing line between the two." -- Kirkus Reviews"A surreal novel about a promising young academic trying to change his life" -- Kirkus Reviews"A. R. Taylor's work positively crackles with wit, humor, and charm. Polished, shining prose that gave me a bad case of sentence envy." -- Ted Bell,New York TimesBestselling Author ofPHANTOM and THE TIME PIRATE"Twisted, hilarious, and strikingly original,Sex, Rain, and Cold Fusionis my kind of book.   Its physicist hero, David Oster, is the sexy, hip, geek star we've been  waiting for." -- Gia Gittleson, RN, former Senior Editor,Los Angeles Magazine"Those  who think science is a staid, impersonal affair need look no further than the raging controversies over cold fusion, the fifth force,  and other forays into uncharted territory that drive some of the greatest (and not so great) minds to distraction. A. R. Taylor captures the sometimes wild and woolly spirit of out-of-the-box science. Physics has never been funnier!"-- Dr. Zaven Arzoumanian, Astrophysicist, NICER, Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer