AC / DC

The publication of Gregory Benford’s “Cosm” is a good example of the validity of what Ecclesiastes tells us: Timing is everything. The novel has a premise not unlike Michael Crichton’s 1987 bestseller, “Sphere.” Both books are suspenseful speculative yarns in which scientists (particle physicists in Benford’s case; marine biologist, astrophysicist and psychologist in Crichton’s) are confronted and confounded by an otherworldly orb that apparently possesses homicidal tendencies.

Since the authors’ variations on that theme are so strikingly different, it’s doubtful that Benford’s work would have triggered more than a fleeting reference to Crichton’s 11-year-old tome had it debuted several months ago. But, as luck would have it, the book arrives at about the same time as the heavily promoted movie version of “Sphere.” This association may be of some aid in boosting the sales of “Cosm,” but those seeking a sequel to “Sphere” will probably find Benford’s tale a bit too esoteric.

Not that “Cosm’s” doesn’t have the potential for commercial success. Set in 2005, it is only marginally futuristic, and its protagonist is perfect for today’s mass reading audience. Alicia Butterworth is a brilliant African American physicist and professor at UC Irvine (where Benford teaches) who is clearly too dedicated for her own happiness. She’s in the midst of a career-making experiment, using special equipment at Long Island’s Brookhaven National Lab, when an explosion occurs.

It devastates the experiment but results in a discovery of considerably more import: a shiny sphere the size of a basketball. Anxious to plumb the mysterious object’s secrets--and concerned that the meddlesome Brookhaven bureaucrats might try to take the ball away--Alicia smuggles it from the lab and carries it cross-country to the university. There she and her team begin their tests and, with thehelp of a somewhat cavalier Caltech theoretician named Max, conclude that the orb is a miniature cosmos (hence the nickname “cosm”). Even better, its lucent surface allows them to observe the creation of a universe that mirrors our own, except that it is developing thousands of times faster.

Unfortunately, the globe has a few surprising quirks. When it emits a blast of energy that barbecues the least likable member of the team, worldwide attention is focused on Alicia and her rogue studies. Powerful societal forces (legal, political, academic and, yes, religious) rise against her and, for reasons ranging from self-serving to well-meaning, try to shut down her window on the new world. Meanwhile, the sphere, with all its provocative secrets, is swiftly growing dimmer as it approaches the outer limits of its accelerated 40-billion-year life span.

It’s all there: A heroine too caught up in her work to stop and smell the flowers, a witty and handsome physicist determined to soften and win her heart, a new universe to contemplate, a struggle against the forces of oppression. Explosions, romance, danger, violent death, an attempted kidnapping, a breathless chase that could change the course of human destiny. It’s the stuff that fills bestseller lists and movie theaters.

Crichton has the knack for taking plot elements like these, polishing the thrills and chills, smoothing out the rough edges with snappy patter and coating the whole thing with just enough contemporary relevance and techno-talk to make it to hover a few inches above its pulp fiction origins. But Benford doesn’t appear to have the heart for that sort of enterprise. In the course of numerous novels, including the Nebula Award-winning “Timescape,” he has earned a reputation as one of the leaders of the subgenre known as hard science fiction. That is, his visions of things to come--from the “Galactic Center” series about the last surviving humans to his continuation of the late Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series--have all been based on enough real science to satisfy the most discerning futurist. “Cosm” should be warmly received by his followers. It contains enough authentic jargon and cutting-edge physics to qualify as science fact. And there is the additional treat of a painfully realistic contemporary university setting, complete with cutthroat rivalries, funding woes and dunderheaded academics.

In spite of it being ostensibly more down to earth than most of Benford’s other works, this is probably not a book that the average fiction reader will embrace. Here, for example, is a portion of the author’s play-by-play of Alicia’s initial experiment: “The Alternating Gradient Synchrotron was handing off its particle ponies to the controlling magnets and pushing electric fields off the big track. Specifically designed strippers had ripped all the electrons from the uranium atoms until they now coasted unprotected, their total nuclear charge of 92 protons exposed to the shove of electric fields.” This no-doubt technically perfect description is manna from heaven for scientists and hard-core sci-fi fans. But the rest of us are left scratching our heads.

And the book’s personas are nearly as perplexing. Though Benford has created memorable characters in the past, here he seems satisfied to merely provide his physicists with enough job skills and surface complexities to serve the story. Their actions in the lab are credible depictions of working scientists, but we’re left to wonder what their lives are like once they remove their white coats. Alicia, quite properly, is the most clearly defined member of the cast. But even she seems rather vague as if, in avoiding the stereotypical traps inherent in crafting a black heroine, the author forgot to come up with a substitute for the dimension that ethnicity might have provided.

Finally, we are left with that miraculous orb, the possible key to the creation of our own world. It’s an inspired device that generates any number of Big Questions involving morality, mortality, ethics and philosophy. But instead of giving these issues a healthy workout, Benford apparently felt that it was sufficient merely to have raised them. The novel ends on a strangely unsatisfying note. Maybe it’s the destiny of these tales of cosmic globes to end not with a Big Bang but a whimper.