The Oppenheimer Alternative

Written by Robert J. Sawyer

Narrated by Josh Bloomberg

Writing with “a sense of wonder that hasn’t prevailed since the days of Heinlein” (Books in Canada), bestnovel Hugo and Nebula Award winner Robert J. Sawyer brings you “a truly science-fictional work of alternate
history” (S.M. Stirling).

While J. Robert Oppenheimer and his Manhattan Project team struggle to develop the A-bomb, Edward Teller
wants something even more devastating: a weapon based on nuclear fusion—the mechanism that powers the sun. But
Teller’s research leads to a terrifying discovery: by the year 2030, the sun will eject its outermost layer, destroying the
entire inner solar system—including Earth.

After the war ends, Oppenheimer’s physicists combine forces with Albert Einstein, computing pioneer John von
Neumann, and rocket designer Wernher von Braun—the greatest scientific geniuses from the last century racing
against time to save our future.

Meticulously researched and replete with real-life characters and events, The Oppenheimer Alternative is a
breathtaking adventure through both real and alternate history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781980098331

Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer is the author of Flashforward, winner of the Aurora Award and the basis for the hit ABC television series. He is also the author of the WWW series—Wake, Watch and Wonder—Hominids, Calculating God, Mindscan, and many other books. He has won the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial awards—making him one of only seven writers in history to win all three of science-fiction’s top awards for best novel. He was born in Ottawa and lives in Mississauga, Ontario.

Reviews for The Oppenheimer Alternative

[jessethek-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Out the gate with romance novel cliches and sneering focus on body type. Abandoned on p 25

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There was once a golden age, humanity had reached for the stars and beyond. Its empire spanned far and wide across the known galaxies. We truly flourished in those times. But sadly like all things pertaining to man and his creations this prosperity did not last. Once again we drove ourselves into conflict over money, religion, and power. Even with all the planets under our control and commerce at an all time high mans greed still managed to overcome him. The religious leaders declared holy wars upon all their adversaries and soon world after world fell into chaos and fighting over who's god was the one true god. World leaders were not happy with governing over just one planet so they quarreled with each other for more worlds. Through all the chaos and bloodshed one undisputed truth remained, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. We are forever doomed to repeat this cycle of hatred and greed as long as the first sin of man resounds in him all other sins follow ever so diligently behind. Now humanity and its accomplishments are nothing more than a residual faint song in the cosmic winds. The worlds we once inhabited have returned to their original states before colonization. Building and towers that once stood as monuments to mankind's progress towards a truly free and beautiful world that he had made now stand empty, lifeless, and have been overtaken by the wilderness around them. The only traces of mankind that is left can only be seen in temple walls, architecture, and statues that managed to survive the tests of time waiting to be discovered and inherited by whomever should find it. We can only hope they do not make the same mistakes as we did. We weren't completely irredeemable. Throughout human history champions arose to challenge the raging storm that is the human world. Such an impossible task could not have been achieved easily. But these champions like Einstein, von Braun, von Neumann, Wigner, Gödel, Dyson, Feynman, Fermi, Oppenheimer, Szilárd, Teller, had some of the embodiments of great virtues that all humans were capable of yet forgotten in all the chaos. Some stood as champions of bravery, indomitable spirit, kindness, justice, and freedom. It is my hope that whoever is to inherit our history and incorporate it into their own would learn the wisdom that only time could teach us had we paid attention. I merely hope that this vestige finds someone.The best novelists have always known more about the world than historians. They have long understood that truth and experience are subjective, that no amount of scholarly apparatus can mask the historian's conscious our unconscious subjectivity. Novelists are more honest, less naive, less cynical, more sceptical. Ideally one reads fiction to fill in the gaps left by the (always unreliable) historical record. If you want to get a sense of what it was like to live in turn of the century America, read E.L. Doctorow and the contemporary novelists for instance. If you want to get the gist of what happened in the Manhattan Project in a what-if- scenario, read this one by Robert J. Sawyer or Greg Benford’s “The Berlin Project”. If you want data, read historians of the period. Very few historians stack up against the novelists of a period, they are too often conditioned by modes of knowledge production and disciplinary convention.I’ve read several Oppenheimer biographies, but this novel with its confabulation of fact and fiction of his life leaves me with a sense of wonderment and bafflement as it should. And the what-if alternative is quite good too. As I read the blurb I thought the what-if alternative was for the Manhattan project to go down the hole of a Pure Fusion Bomb (not ignited by a fission process). Fortunately, Sawyer had other ideas...