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Cosm By Gregory Benford Avon Books 1998 Cosm Goes To Court By Rick McGrath CHARGE: Silly Use Of Science Judge Reader presiding Prosecution: Dr. Strangelove Defense: Tom Swift Synopsis: Alicia Butterworth, a self-described pudgy, black UCal (Irvine) physicist who lives in Laguna Beach, discovers a bowling-ball sized sphere of indeterminate origin and composition following an explosion to a particle-collider experiment at Brookhaven, Long Island. The time is Spring, 2005. Overwhelmed with curiosity, greed, and equipment, she manages to "steal" her accidental creation from the shattered remains of the particle accelerator and get it back to her lab in California, aided by her post-doc assistant, Zak Nguyen, and grad student, Brad Douglas. Here, they perform experiments to discover what the sphere is, while Alicia begins her book-long battle with outside authorities.. .starting with the boys at Brookhaven who want the thing back. Enter Max Jalon, genius theoretical physicist. Exit Brad Douglas, fried to a crisp by the sphere late at night. Max's task is to "understand" the sphere, using standard popular scientific theory on how our cosmos was created. Big Bang updates. Alicia is torn between science and the increasing pressures of the outside world, exacerbated by the untimely death of her grad slave/student. Max figures out the sphere is a new universe unto itself, (hence the name "Cosm", from "cosmic") the boys at Brookhaven recreate Alicia's experiment and make their own sphere, and Max then discovers the sphere contains a universe in which time is moving wildly faster than ours, so we get to watch the life and death of a universe from the comfort of a lab chair. Alicia spends the rest of the book being hounded by the press, religious freaks, the government and special interest groups. She and Max finally re-steal the sphere and take it to the desert where it predictably evaporates in a brilliant flash. At the end, she and Max announce their impending wedding. Prosecution:  The charge is one of silliness, yet, ach du!... it could be one of blatant theft, and even above, most cursory synopsis should be enough for the prosecution to rest its case... Judge Reader:  Good, I'm late for golf... Prosecution: ...but this is silliness of a special, horrid type, mien fuh...your honour: the mixing of plausible hard science with a tepid collection of politically-correct quasi-characters, the most drawn of whom - our minority group (ahem) heroine, takes chapters off to discuss men, food and fashion with her equally inane girlfriend, while all the while her certain Nobel prize lies attended by a graduate student in her oddly secret lab. An irony not lost on one who watched the divine 3rd Reich pass by its destiny with the atom...But I digress... what can we really expect from a writer such as the much-published and peer-lauded Dr Benford? Oddly enough, he too is a physics prof at UCal (Irvine). He, too, lives in Laguna Beach. Perhaps the most creative thing about this comic cosm is that he chose the most politically-correct heroine possible, a black female, gave her a Korean assistant, and set her up against a bunch of bad white boys to triumph in the end. Recent experiences of my own lead me to believe this outlook is reflective of modern university politics, no? In my day it was the best idea that matched our leader's, that won, not the democratic tokenism that instructs today's administrators. Judge Reader:  Could we stick to the point? Defense:  Hear, hear. Judge Reader: I'm listening... Prosecution:  And the point is this: Dr. Benford blithely steals his basic plot - the Cosm sphere - from real science done in the 1980s by, most notably, real scientist, Dr. Alan Guth, inventor of the inflationary universe theory. May I call Dr. Guth to the stand? Judge Reader: This should be interesting... Prosecution: Dr. Guth, your CV, if you please... Alan Guth: Essentially, I invented the Inflationary Theory of the Universe. The theory basically states that, after an incredibly short period of time, the universe super-cooled and when the change came, it expanded well beyond the speed of light from the size of a molecule to a grapefruit. So, what?, you may say. The "flattening out" of imperfections during this extraordinary moment offers solutions to most of the prior theoretical problems of the old Big Bang Theory. Prosecution: Thank you. And your connection to these proceedings? Alan Guth: All the "science" in this book is taken from a collolorary of my theory, which supposes that our universe could be the "ultimate free lunch" insofar as it could be the result of a "false vacuum" in another set of dimensions. This false vacuum separates away to form a parallel universe...Our whole universe could evaporate at any time...I wrote about it in a paper which hypothosized that it might be possible to create one in a lab. All you need is a gram of matter in a space so small it's 10 to the 80th power heavier than water. If you made one, it would be created out of any space in our universe. This theory  is  used by Dr. Benford through his mouthpiece, Max, to explain all my scientific stuff in one chapter, and then Dr. Benford pads out the rest of the book with what one shudders to assume is the fictitious lives of modern scientists. As a scientist myself, I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about. Prosecutor: Thank you, Dr. Guth. Or, should I say, Dr. Gut!.hahaha...Sorry, your Honour, Art is not imitating science; in this case Art is imitating TV soap opera. Mien gott, your lordship, Dr. Benford is ultimately reduced to telling his story through news clips - he is no journalist - and finally wrapping it all up with two pages of  fake newspaper headlines! Not the most honourable way to finish off a story. If you want real scientific excitement, read in Dr. Guth's own words his  discovery and attendant scientific work in his book, The Inflationary Universe, published in 1997 by Addison Wesley. I might also point out, your holiness, that, ironically, you'll find a squib by Dr. Benford on the back cover in which he writes that, "In the perplexing labyrinth of cosmology, you can find no surer or more entertaining guide than Alan Guth. His key insight gave us our current view of our universe, and perhaps of others". No kidding, Dr. B., but it is our contention this is one of the sillier views of one of those "others". Defense: I will concede to my famous friend that a smattering of hard science does act as the raison d'être for Cosm, but I would argue that this smattering is the cosmic glue that holds together all science fiction, including my own ...In fact, I've been sitting here all during your rant, wondering why some incredible invention doesn't pop into the story just in time to take you and your skin bag of realism out of the picture for good! Judge Reader: Tom, lettuce stay in control, (he said crisply)... Defense: Sorry, your honour. The creation, study and eventual disintegration of the sphere, the Cosm, neatly reflects the life of our heroine: her sexual awakening (finding the sphere), her frustration (understanding the sphere), and her ultimate marriage (losing the sphere), an act of desert desperation which also represents the ultimate union of experimenter and theorist.  In genre fiction it is the sphere, with its mixture of female and male connotations, that ultimately becomes a fitting image for this realistic study of science and the brave people who keep it progressing. These are not serious tomes written to inform and educate; we recognize the power of the hook. Without the science it's just fiction. I have no modern machine with me..I must assume this is a literary court. But come down to the paperback racks at the comics store, and riffle through the day's sales. We're conceding pulp is pulp. We say that what really matters is sales. Let the market choose. Fans of science fiction have a god-given right to implode their brains - it's their money. Bottom line, silly is rarely recognized as a detriment to our form. I made over $12,450 profit in 1928 with a book about a machine that showed talking pictures. Black characters cleaned my shoes. Jews were the bad guys. Today, politically correct characters are de rigeur, just as Heinlein's mental monster in Stranger In A Strange Land was considered cool in the 60s. Or Asimov's concept of psychohistory in the Foundation series. It's all marketing: find out what the public want, something scientific, and surround that bit of the big picture with a collection of one-dimensional characters who think and act like their puerile readers. Nothing wrong with that. Money in the bank. Judge Reader:  May I have your summations? Prosecutor: Silly is as silly does. This book represents yet another simple case of using a scientific idea like a lead character and taking it nowhere. A new, separate universe is evolving in your lab and you're sitting up with a girlfriend wondering why you can't get laid. Waste of time. She can't  get laid because nobody gets laid in SF. All too silly. Defense: Why worry about silly? Cosm introduces enough of a basic theory  to make a difference - who cares about the coating on the pill?  If you're disappointed with the execution, you still have the money-making concept. Judge Reader:  Sorry, Tom, this is a literary court, not a meeting of accountants. The charge is upheld and Cosm is found guilty of gross silliness. My prescription is this: Dr Benford, please refund Dr Strangelove his $30 Canadian for this door-stopping piece of drivel. Case closed. ©Rick McGrath 22/10/98 MORE REVIEWS Movies: Jack Hill - Pit Stop Jack Hill - Spider Baby Sam Fuller - Shock Corridor Curtis Harrington - Night Tide Jack Hill - Switchblade Sisters Jack Hill - The Swinging Cheerleaders Sam Fuller - Meanest Men In The West Robert Frank - Rolling Stones' Cocksucker Blues Maysles Brothers - Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter Various Shorts - Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life Television: Patrick McGoohan - The Prisoner Features: Bohren und der Club of Gore - Drilling For Doom. And Finding It. Bohren und der Club of Gore - Geisterfaust. Not Your Average Ghost Story These Boots Were Made For Burnin' - The Bootleg Collector's Obsession Music Concert DVD: Sheryl Crow - Rockin The Globe Live Steely Dan - Two Against Nature Music CD: Sade - Lovers Live Sade - Lovers Rock Sade - The Best Of Sade Phil Manzanera - Vozero Roger Waters - In The Flesh Steely Dan - Two Against Nature Lamya - Learning From Falling Shania Twain - Up! 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