a dose of time slippage thrown in for good measure—then we have the situation I am trying to describe in BRIGHT EMPIRES.
Over thirty years ago, a physicist friend who worked at Fermilab—the massive proton-antiproton collider in the suburbs of Chicago—took me on a tour of the facility. The lab itself was still fairly new at the time, and the physicists there had just identified a range of new subatomic particles: quarks. They were preparing to begin experiments in super-cold conditions with temperatures approaching absolute zero. As I look back, I think that the experience of getting up close and personal with that high-tech laboratory and coming under the spell of my friend’s enthusiasm for high energy physics launched my own interest in a subject that continues to fascinate: which is why my reading table supports a tower of books on physics (both quantum and astro), as well as cosmology, philosophy, anthropology, theology, and to be sure, history.
In the current climate, when new discoveries are announced nearly every day, it is difficult to recall that as the world marched towards the third millennium scientists were beginning to hint—not without a tinge of sadness or regret, I suspect—that science was very close to explaining everything. The sentiment was so widely expressed that by 2000 a Time magazine article was wondering, “Will there be anything left to discover?” Science, the louder voices decreed, had conquered the universe; all that was left was to write up the notes and fill in the few remaining blanks. Every major discovery had been made, and there was, sniff, nothing left.
Not only has that eventuality failed to materialise, but in the few short years since Time floated the question something very like the reverse has transpired instead. Discovery itself has exploded. Old and established certainties are being swept away by new theories driven by new discoveries.
Just now, scientific eyes are on the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, where physicists are sifting through the results of proton-proton smashups looking for dark matter, whatever undiscovered subatomic particles might exist, and perhaps those elusive extra dimensions of the universe. They are struggling to makes sense of a universe none of them would have imagined even ten or fifteen years ago, a universe that constantly reveals new depths of wonder.
Theories, like eggs and promises, are made to be broken. Even the most perfunctory dabble in the history of science should be enough to remind us all that the closer science gets to describing something, the more it discovers how much there is to describe. Far from explaining everything, each new discovery or theory opens up whole new regions of exploration; each new advance uncovers more data that must in some way be accounted for, requiring the overhaul of old theories or the creation of new ones, and so on. In such a world, it would be useful to have a polymath like Thomas Young on the case.
In their book Quantum Enigma, Professors Rosenblum and Kuttner express their intention and hope that readers will be brought to the boundary where the particular expertise of physicists is no longer a sure guide. This is the realm of BRIGHT EMPIRES—a place where all the old ways of thinking about reality break down in the face of a new conception of the universe. “When experts disagree,” they write, “you may choose your own expert. Since the quantum enigma arises in the simplest quantum experiment, its essence can be fully comprehended with little technical background. Non-experts can therefore come to their own conclusions.”
That being the case, why shouldn’t a novelist participate in the conversation?
Acknowledgements
In addition to thanks previously given to Wael El-Aidy, Danuta Kluz, Clare Backhouse, Suzannah Lipscomb, Drake Lawhead, and Ross Lawhead, the author now acknowledges the assistance of Michael and Martina Potts (German language). All errors and flights of fancy are my own.
COMING SEPTEMBER 2012
A BRIGHT EMPIRES NOVEL
Quest the Third
THE
SPIRIT WELL
English legend tells of an army of knights
that will remain sleeping until the last days.
The knights are waking up . . .
FROM ROSS LAWHEAD,
SON OF STEPHEN R. LAWHEAD, COMES
THE ANCIENT EARTH TRILOGY.
Table of Contents
Important People in the Bright Empires series
Previously in the Bright Empires series
Part One: The Book of Forbidden Secrets
Chapter 1: In Which Some Things Are Best Forgotten
Chapter 2: In Which a Wander in the Wilderness Is Good for the Soul
Chapter 3: In Which an Omen Is Proved True
Chapter 4: In Which Tea and Sandwiches Are Encountered
Chapter 5: In Which a Guest Is Honoured
Chapter 6: In Which the Pregnant Question Is Asked
Chapter 7: In Which December Proves the Cruellest Month
Part Two: Auspicious Meetings
Chapter 8: In Which the Aid of a Good Doctor Is Sought
Chapter 9: In Which Full Disclosure Takes a Drubbing
Chapter 10: In Which an Identity Is Mistaken
Chapter 11: In Which Wilhelmina Learns the Ropes
Chapter 12: In Which Sheer, Bloody-Minded Persistence Is Rewarded
Chapter 13: In Which an Impossible Birth Is Celebrated
Chapter 14: In Which the Truth Cannot Be Ignored
Part Three: Coming Forth by Day
Chapter 15: In Which an Apprenticeship Is Begun
Chapter 16: In Which Ruffled Feathers Are Smoothed
Chapter 17: In Which a Burden Shared Is a Burden Halved
Chapter 18: In Which a Visit to Prague Is Wangled
Chapter 19: In Which a Three-Cup Problem Is Expounded
Chapter 20: In Which the Infant Science of Archaeology Is Radically Advanced
Part Four: The Language of Angels
Chapter 21: In Which the Scholarly Inquiry Bears Strange Fruit
Chapter 22: In Which Blood Tells
Chapter 23: In Which Patience and Practice Pay Off
Chapter 24: In Which a Destiny Is Determined
Chapter 25: In Which the Past Catches Up
Chapter 26: In Which the Question of What to Do Is Asked and Answered—Twice
Chapter 27: In Which a Little Light Is Shed
Part Five: A House Made All of Bone
Chapter 28: In Which Feeling Good and Strong Is Not Enough
Chapter 29: In Which a Most Peculiar Predicament Arises
Chapter 30: In Which Kit Embraces the Stone Age
Chapter 31: In Which a Sensible Course of Action Is Proposed
Chapter 32: In Which Confidences Are Frankly Shared
Chapter 33: In Which Formal Introductions Are Made