NEUTRINO WARNING

A physics graduate student in a future Colorado wracked by climate change disasters faces multiple dangers when she attempts momentous experiments in clean-energy production and time reversal.

Smith offers this SF novel as a prequel to her parallel-universes adventure Kat Cubed (2016). The setting is an unnamed Colorado college campus in March 2098. Kathy Garcia is a 27-year-old grad student, part of a group of brainy folks recruited from all over the world. They are hoping to reverse the catastrophic effects of climate change by achieving fusion-based clean energy in a magnetic-field reactor called a “Tokamak.” But a freak avalanche (one of numerous altered-weather disasters) sweeps through the physics building, killing some of Kathy’s colleagues and devastating the technology—which, in an academic milieu destabilized by pandemics, wildfires, hunger, economic malaise, and increased mortality, was not the best anyway. Improvising with computers and gear salvaged from a nearby, relatively undamaged neutrino studies laboratory, Kathy and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Jake Moretti—and Ellen, the protagonist’s helpful, phone-based software, personal assistant app who seems to be evolving into a true artificial intelligence—seek to continue the project. But they encounter unexpected opposition and professional jealousy from other members of the international research team. As the stakes escalate to the truly life-threatening, Kathy makes the amazing discovery of a Tokamak side effect that could effectively serve as a microcosmic form of time travel and a vehicle for reaching out to earlier generations for help. Readers already acquainted with Kat Cubed will know that the ultimate result is three alternating, dystopian-future realities, all afflicted to varying degrees by climate change. This prelude can be enjoyed as more or less a stand-alone even if readers don’t know a Tokamak from an autoclave. The author is a scientist in real life and a prolific author of largely whimsical romps incorporating concepts of physics and probability. Smith delivers a nicely casual voice, a hero whose concessions to swear words are minor things likeGaia, yikes!and flooding (instead of the other f-word), and highly advanced science in doses manageable and nonpedantic enough for general readers.

An engaging tale featuring cli-fi, college intrigue, romance, and particle physics.