The Trigger - Softcover

Clarke, Arthur C.; Kube-McDowell, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0002247127 ISBN 13: 9780002247122

Publisher: Voyager, 2000

Synopsis

Without war, we’d hardly have any history. Without murder, we’d hardly have any fiction. Then along came the Trigger ... the only true promise of peace that technology has ever devised.

From the legendary Arthur C. Clarke, in collaboration with Michael Kube-McDowell of Star Wars fame, comes a chilling day-after-tomorrow thriller of huge vision and startling menace.

Jeffrey Horton of Terabyte Laboratories is the brilliant, driven and idealistic scientist responsible for the discovery of the Trigger. It was an accidental discovery: Horton was hoping to build the analogue of a laser for gravity. Instead, his experiment, when fired up for the first time, triggered all nearby explosive material. In that moment, an end to the power of the gun became feasible. In future, a firearm – or a bomb – could be made powerless to harm the innocent.
Karl Brohier, Horton’s boss and a Nobel Prive winner, has to decide what to do with the Trigger. Patriotism dictates he and Horton hand over the science to the Pentagon. Idealism demands the invention be given to the whole world, regardless of politics. But what haunts Brohier is the fear that with one wrong word to the wrong person, a convoy of black vans filled with Special Operations troops will swoop down on the Terabyte campus and cart away everything, including himself and Horton. So Brohier takes news of the Trigger direct to the White House.
President Mark Breland, former star pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, has a record of integrity and liberalism. He would rather be wrong in a hurry than agonize his way to a state of ambivalence, and he promises Horton and Brohier that the Trigger will be made available to the world. The Pentagon regards Breland’s promise as wrong to the point of being treasonous. It involves disarming the military!

In a world where violence has reached epidemic proportions, no one can be trusted. Too many people have a stake in the business of violence to give peace a chance.

About this title

Review:

Set in a future in which virtual trials are a reality, and when a "Windows era" PC can be bought for 25 US dollars, The Trigger is a hi-tech science-fiction thriller which follows a discovery by physicist Jeffrey Horton which can render weaponry harmless. The promise is an end to warfare, and to the arms industry. Vested interests are not about to allow this to happen, and Horton finds himself caught in a deadly, escalating crisis, as the world spirals towards war and expediency comes face to face with morality. Horton's breakthrough offers a last chance for peace, but once the genie has been let out of the bottle, can it ever be contained again?

On the surface this is a most unusual book for Arthur C Clarke. There is none of the interplanetary questing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Rendezvous With Rama, and while in the past Clarke's books have been almost totally devoid of violence, here is a direct confrontation with the subject. As such The Trigger reads less like Clarke's previous fiction than a liberal answer to the blockbusting adventure novels of Tom Clancy. Likewise, the flashes of humour, the sharp dialogue and the political intrigue will be more familiar to readers of Michael Kube-McDowell's Alternities. However, the result of this collaboration is an epic thriller, as well as a surprising change of direction for Arthur C Clarke, undoubtedly the most famous science fiction writer in the world. --Gary S. Dalkin

Review:

‘Arthur C. Clarke is the prophet of the space age’
The Times

‘A one-man literary Big Bang, Clarke has originated his own vast and teeming futurist universe’
Sunday Times

‘Kube-McDowell is reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke at his best’
NEWSDAY

‘Kube-McDowell is an author to be reckoned with’
Greg Bear

About this edition

• Publisher: Voyager
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0002247127
• ISBN 13: 9780002247122
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 560