Sex, drugs, and quantum physics collide with artificial intelligence, faith and free will in this perspective-altering story. The memo said they'd get bonuses for submitting patents, so why not? Money came easily during the dot-com boom. Concealed in engineering jargon, Ryan McNear submits a patent for the soul disguised as a software algorithm and his best friend Foster Reed rewrites Genesis and calls it a "power generator." A few years later, amid the fallout of a ruptured technology bubble, his career ruined and family shredded, a desperate Ryan discovers that a company headed by his old friend Foster is developing his patent. What he thought was a joke is generating stacks of money amid claims that it will provide a source of limitless energy and prove the existence of God. Willing to try anything to rebuild his life, Ryan stakes a legal claim to the patent. He soon discovers a sinister undercurrent in the venture. Racing against time and aided by a motley group of assistants that includes an attorney/conman, a beautiful and passionate physicist and a death-obsessed adolescent math prodigy, Ryan gets caught in a battle between hard science and fundamentalist religion that threatens his sanity, his freedom and his son. Before long Ryan will test the limits of faith and free will, evaluate the nature of desire, and comprehend the human soul in a way that requires a single step, rather than a great leap, of faith.
I am Ransom Stephens. In my novels, I try to put interesting, fun, sometimes a little kooky characters in a good story built on a scientific premise. As you can see from the reviews, people really seem to like my first novel, The God Patent. My second novel, The Sensory Deception, comes out in August-2013. The God Patent is built on quantum physics and The Sensory Deception is built on the relationship between the senses and the mind.
My books are shelved in science fiction, but my science is accurate, cutting edge, and I work hard to make it accessible and fascinating without taking up so many pages that it slows down the story. I like the kind of novels that make you feel like you've been survived something with the characters so that when you put down the book you feel exhilarated, maybe a bit exhausted, but kind of pumped, too, you know?
My professional background is in particle physics research and technology development. As a particle physicist, I got to participate in a few cool discoveries: a new type of matter, the R(1525), a particle formed in the fusion of two photons--not a big deal, the sort of thing that interested about 30 people--and, along with a thousand other physicists at Fermilab, collaborated on the discovery of the top quark. In high tech, I got to lead a team of engineers in solving a tough timing noise problem that enabled the development of high speed technology that's still emerging--the sort of thing that made a handful of executives a ton of money (I still drive a Civic). Through that, what I really did was write tons of software, spend a great deal of time trying to find weak signals hidden in strong backgrounds, wrote and presented lots of papers, and got to travel to places like Vietnam and Russia.
Right now, I'm working on a series, The Time Prisoner, which is about a schizophrenic physicist who believes that the voices he hears are his own voice speaking from his future(s). I'm also on deadline for a nonfiction neuroscience book that focuses on distinctions and similarities in topics like talent & skill, discovery & creativity, intelligence & intuition, and so on. The working title is The Left Brain Speaks but the Right Brain Laughs.
I write for electronics trade magazines, including plenty of popular science--the Higgs boson, gravity waves, radiation, philosophy of science, ... You can find links to my science articles at http://science.ransomstephens.com.
Thank you for reading my work and, if you have a chance, for reviewing it. I've learned a lot from my reader reviews, for example, my writing seems to do a good job disappearing behind the characters and story: readers can't seem to decipher my personal political and religious beliefs (or lack thereof). You're welcome to guess, and if you ask (ransom [at] ransomstephens.com), I'll tell you, but please don't blame me for what my characters say and do, if I had better control of them, none of this would have happened.
Thank you, Ransom.
@ransomstephens
ransomstephens.com
facebook.com/ransom.stephens
