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Overview June 30th, 1908 — In the remote Tunguska region of Siberia, the most violent cosmic collision in recorded history flattened ancient forests over an area half the size of Rhode Island. Yet after a hundred years of international scientific research the cause of this impact remains a mystery. A MAVERICK ASTROPHYSICIST Jack Adler thinks he’s fingered the culprit: a submicroscopic black hole, smaller than an atom, heavier than a mountain, older than the stars. What’s more, that fantastic object is still down there, deep inside the Earth, burrowing through the mantle in an ever-decaying orbit that will end only when it has devoured the entire planet. A ROOKIE SECRET AGENT Marianna Bonaventure is tracking three missing scientists See more details below

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Overview

June 30th, 1908 — In the remote Tunguska region of Siberia, the most violent cosmic collision in recorded history flattened ancient forests over an area half the size of Rhode Island. Yet after a hundred years of international scientific research the cause of this impact remains a mystery.

A MAVERICK ASTROPHYSICIST

Jack Adler thinks he’s fingered the culprit: a submicroscopic black hole, smaller than an atom, heavier than a mountain, older than the stars. What’s more, that fantastic object is still down there, deep inside the Earth, burrowing through the mantle in an ever-decaying orbit that will end only when it has devoured the entire planet.

A ROOKIE SECRET AGENT

Marianna Bonaventure is tracking three missing scientists suspected of involvement in weapons of mass destruction research. The trail leads to Rusalka, the luxurious floating corporate headquarters of billionaire Russian industrialist Arkady Grishin. Determined to prove herself, Marianna creates an elaborate ruse in order to infiltrate the megayacht — a dangerous gambit that requires the coerced cooperation of a rather special civilian . . .

AN UNCANNY CONSULTANT

Jonathan Knox is one of the country’s most sought-after analysts; his knack for intuiting hidden relationships among seemingly disparate events serves his Fortune-50 clients well. But when Marianna compels the reluctant Knox to join her undercover mission, he must grapple with puzzles of a whole different order of magnitude.

Against violent and cunning opposition, the three of them unearth a scheme to capture the submicroscopic black hole that caused the Tunguska Event and use its awesome power to transform the world — or end it altogether.

Bill DeSmedt’s debut is a tour-de-force of breakneck plotting, complex characters, and cutting-edge science. From the trackless wastes of Siberia to the rooftops of Manhattan to the stygian depths of the North Atlantic, Singularity weaves a richly detailed and intelligent tale, meticulously researched and elegantly told.

Editorial Reviews

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The Barnes & Noble Review
Reminiscent of novels by science fiction masters like Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov -- authors who based their stories on hard science -- Bill DeSmedt's debut novel, Singularity, is an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that revolves around a submicroscopic black hole in a decaying orbit deep inside the Earth's mantle that will persist until it has devoured the entire planet!

The story begins on June 30, 1908, in a remote Siberian area known as the Stony Tunguska Basin. There, something crashes into Earth and topples forests over an area half the size of Rhode Island. Was it part of a comet? An alien spacecraft? A solar plasmoid released from the sun? After nearly a century of conjecture, it remains the "cosmic mystery of the millennium."

But Jack Adler, an American astrophysicist, thinks he has it all figured out. Furthering a much-ridiculed 1973 theory known as the Jackson-Ryan hypothesis, which supposes that a black hole -- smaller than an atom and heavier than a mountain -- was responsible for the Tungaska Event, Adler believes the black hole didn't exit the planet as Jackson and Ryan surmised but remained inside Earth. Meanwhile, rookie government agent Marianne Bonaventure and an unassuming analyst, Jon Knox, are thrown together as they try to figure out why a powerful Russian industrialist is secretly gathering scientists and spending billions on alleged WMD research.

With a cast of engaging characters, highly inventive and witty prose, and enough intriguing plot twists to keep readers in a state of perpetual shock until the very last page, Singularity is easily as entertaining as any Michael Crichton or Greg Bear thriller. Equal parts hard science fiction adventure and mainstream technothriller, Singularity is arguably one of the best debuts of 2004. Paul Goat Allen

Publishers Weekly
DeSmedt's debut SF thriller, a brisk Michael Crichton clone, vividly depicts the Tunguska event that leveled a big patch of Siberia in 1908, then shifts to the near-future, where warrior woman Marianna Bonaventure is working for CROM (Critical Resources Oversight Mandate), the U.S. Department of Energy's branch for dealing with loose WMD talent. Meanwhile, in Siberia, scientist Jack Adler discovers that Tunguska was actually hit by a microscopic black hole, not a meteorite. Marianna and an intuitive analyst, Jonathan Knox, are assigned to infiltrate the gigantic yacht Rusalka, owned by the Russian billionaire Arkady Grishin, who is on the trail of something odd. It turns out that Grishin is not who he seems and his motives for finding the Tunguska object are a great deal more sinister than anyone had supposed. The book bounces along, from well-developed scenes to lesser ones and back again, with a good deal of deft if not particularly original characterization. The sexual chemistry between Marianna and Jonathan adds spice. Exotic hardware, lifestyles of the rich and notorious, double- and triple-crosses and a slightly rushed and facile conclusion all make a respectable if not outstanding first effort. Agent, Jake Elwell at Wieser & Elwell. (Nov. 8) Forecast: A $25,000 promo budget, a blurb from Craig Bear and an 11-city author tour should ensure respectable sales. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
More Reviews (4) Fewer Reviews
Cynthia Ward
Bill DeSmedt should be on the bestseller lists with Tom Clancy and Dan Brown. DeSmedt’s ambitious and exciting debut novel, Singularity, mixes a post-Cold-War conspiracy with cutting-edge quantum physics and a century-old mystery to create a terrifying techno-thriller.
Killian Melloy
Grade: A “What If?” is the mantra of the speculative fiction writer, and Bill DeSmedt asks one big What If in this blend of international espionage, particle physics, and cold-war thriller. What If... this were the one of the funniest, most frightening books of the year?
First time novelist Bill DeSmedt ably blends a mixture of science fiction technology and ideas with international thriller ass-kicking action...
Paul Goat Allen
Reminiscent of novels by science fiction masters like Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov -- authors who based their stories on hard science -- Bill DeSmedt's debut novel, Singularity, is an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that revolves around a submicroscopic black hole in a decaying orbit deep inside the Earth's mantle that will persist until it has devoured the entire planet!
Steve Powers
Singularity stands out because of its highly original premise. ...
This book rocks with great, plausible science and an exciting plot filled with chases, spy action and the big, evil specter of Rusalka, funded by billionaire Arkady Grishin. Those who like their science fiction novels laced with healthy dollops of action and hard science will love Mr. DeSmedt’s first novel.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780974573441
  • Publisher: Per Aspera Press
  • Publication date: 12/19/2004
  • Pages: 499
  • Series: The Archon Sequence Series, #1
  • Product dimensions: 6.16 (w) x 9.26 (h) x 1.65 (d)

Meet the Author

Bill DeSmedt has worked as a computer programmer, a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and a Soviet area expert. He lives in Milford, Pennsylvania.

Interviews & Essays

Explorations Interview with Bill DeSmedt

Paul Goat Allen: Bill, what was the motivation behind writing a novel like Singularity?

Bill DeSmedt: It's all Carl Sagan's fault! Several summers back, I was sitting around on a rainy Saturday afternoon watching a rerun of Cosmos, Episode IV, "Heaven and Hell." That's the one where Carl talks about meteor and cometary impacts. So, midway through, Carl gets around to the Tunguska Event -- a still-unexplained impact that wiped out an area half the size of the state of Rhode Island. And from there, he goes on to the Jackson-Ryan hypothesis: that the Event was a collision between Earth and an atom-sized black hole. And then he's refuting J&R, citing the standard missing exit-event objection -- namely, that the mini black hole should have cut through the solid body of the earth like a knife through morning mist and come exploding up out of the North Atlantic an hour later, wreaking all manner of havoc. Never happened. And, next thing you know Carl's gone on to Meteor Crater in Arizona or some such, leaving me sitting there, staring off into space.

"But, Carl," I said, "What if the damn thing never came out?" Little did I know it at the moment, but I'd just been hooked. I wanted to see where things went from there. In my effort to find out, I tried giving the idea away to the few published authors I could reach, hoping one of them would write the book so I could read it. No takers. "Great concept," they'd say, "but I wouldn't know where to start with the science." Finally it dawned on me that the only way I was ever going to find out how that book came out in the end was if I wrote it myself. So, with more than a little trepidation, that's what I did.

PGA: So has a consensus been reached about what really caused the Tunguska Event?

BD: If you're asking whether some theories are more popular than others, I'd have to say, yes -- that, over the past few decades, a consensus has grown up around the proposition that Tunguska was either an asteroid strike or a cometary impact. But, fashionable as they may be, those two hypotheses can't both be right. And science isn't supposed to be a popularity contest anyway. (Good thing, too, or we might still be saddled with Ptolemaic astronomy and the phlogiston theory of combustion and élan vital and the luminiferous aether -- all of which were pretty popular ideas in their day.) So, maybe a better way to ask it is: Is there a preponderance of evidence in favor of any one theory? And there I'd have to answer: Not that I've seen so far. The problem with the leading contenders is that the asteroid advocates have leveled some pretty damning arguments against the cometary hypothesis, and the comet theorists have given back as good as they got.

But, to make that long story short, neither the cometary nor the asteroidal explanation seems able to account for all the observed Tunguska phenomena. In fact, the best thing they've got going for them is that no viable third alternative has emerged -- yet.

PGA: After reading your novel, I was struck by how much Singularity reminded me of hard science fiction stories by authors that I loved to read while growing up -- Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, et al. Do any science fiction authors -- or science fiction novels -- stand out in your mind as inspirational?

BD: First of all, let me say I'm profoundly honored -- and humbled -- to be mentioned in the same breath with the giants of the field. Most of the writers you name were my favorites when I was growing up, too. In terms of influences and inspirations, I'd even add a few more: Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, James Blish, Michael Crichton, Vernor Vinge, and Roger Zelazny. Oh, and Ray Bradbury's "Night Meeting" from his Martian Chronicles, which I chanced to read in Russian translation before I ever encountered the original English but which spoke to me across that linguistic divide, just as its characters speak across gulfs of time and space. If Damon Knight is right about the core of the science fiction experience being a "sense of wonder," then that little story has remained my touchstone for the feeling all down the years.

PGA: At the conclusion of Singularity, there was mention of a sequel in the works, entitled Dualism. Can you give readers a hint about what transpires in the next novel?

BD: Well, it's early to be disclosing plot details, but thematically Dualism will (as the title implies) explore Descartes's mind/body dichotomy filtered through the prism of near-future developments in artificial intelligence and quantum computation. It'll feature Jonathan Knox and Marianna Bonaventure, too -- turns out I'm not through with them yet, nor they with me. And (as the title also implies) Dualism will be exploring the next move in the dialectic of their relationship as well.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 9 )

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Sort by: Showing all of 9 Customer Reviews

  • Posted September 8, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    9780345457899 9780345347954 9780765348272 9780553287899

    One of my favorites

    I read this about 4 years ago or so and just thought I would check to see what kind of reviews were now out there. It really is an excellent book with good characters and interesting science. If you like hard science fiction this is a fantastic choice to read! Highly recommended. If you look at what I also recommend, I guarantee this book is right up there with the others.

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 30, 2005

    The next generation of hard sci fi

    As a fan of Michael Crichton who awaits his releases, this book manages to shine. Hard science blended with an action based plot is sure to please. I also recommend Human Interface by another debut author, Jason Giacchino available here at Barnes & Nobel. These two authors are really providing alternatives for those of us who endure the space between Crichton masterpieces.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 8, 2005

    Singularity stands out from the crowd

    A first glance at the cover tab will leave the well read scifi buff thinking of David Brin's Earth or Gregory Benford's Artifact, but let me assure you that Mr. DeSmedt has much more in mind for the piece of the primordial explosion that hides within the earth. His cast of characters have grand plans for the remenant of the Tunguska explosion. Add to this well developed likeable characters, cutting edge and black project level technology and an explosive finish and you have a glimpse of what this book encompasses. Truly a wonderful debut.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 1, 2005

    Bill DeSmedt puts the `Science¿ Back in Science Fiction

    Somewhere along the line, somebody took the Science out of Science Fiction. Bill DeSmedt¿s debut novel puts it back. In the hands of a lesser writer, this book could have easily bogged down under the weight of its own technical detail. Fortunately, Bill DeSmedt is not a lesser writer. The plot ricochets from hard science, to espionage, to shamanism, and back again, weaving divergent story lines into the literary equivalent of a black hole. Before you know it, you¿ve skidded past the event horizon, and there¿s no turning back. You¿re in for a white-knuckle ride, and all you can do is hang on for dear life.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 13, 2004

    Michael Crichton stand aside ...

    A new contender for supreme master of the science-thriller has emerged in Bill DeSmedt. 'Singularity' brings together elements of suspense, faithful science, mysticism, and a spine chilling connection to a real world scientific mystery that makes for a remarkable debut book. 'Singularity' takes you from the still-baffling mystery of the Tunguska event, a massive explosion in desolate Siberia in 1908, to the near present. Its characters vary from Evenki tribesman (the only direct observers of the event) to modern day physicists and, of course, to spies (both by training and indenture). If you enjoy Crichton, Bear, Brin, or Benford, and other authors who write science fiction that does not play fast and loose with the laws of physics. You will really enjoy Singularity. I anxiously await DeSmedt's next book.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 4, 2012

    Good science and strange situations

    This book deals with a lot of good science and people you would like to meet. It deals with money, power and the situations which change on the spur of the moment. It deals with large corporations and what they will attempt to do for the principles which the founders established it. It has conspiracy theroies, cloak and dagger, and dareing do agents making it up as you go along. I like the fact of the science being well thought out and investigated and displayed with enough plot and twist to keep you involved throughout the story. It gets a bit long developing the storyline and plot but it does not get boring. It also investigates other science facts that help keep the story going. At the end it reaches a pace that will not let you put it down easily.

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  • Posted February 26, 2012

    Great read

    Fast paced action and suspense

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 28, 2012

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 29, 2012

    No text was provided for this review.

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