Carter Scholz has made a difficult subject highly relevant and entertaining with Radiance, his debut novel investigating the darkness at the heart of the nuclear defense industry. With the eye of an insider, Scholz focuses this daring work on a California nuclear testing lab in the mid-1990s and declassifies the motivations and manipulations of its senior planners. The novel follows Philip Quine, a reluctant weapons research scientist whose whistle-blowing report on lab data falsification leads to his promotion as interim lab director. As Quine gradually discovers the defense industry's deep-seated deceptions and self-sustaining tactics, the novel turns its attention to human nature and the unspoken drives and fears that propel us to contention.
An excellent novel on all counts, Radiance succeeds most notably due to Scholz's extensive research and use of detail. He provides plenty of complex scientific information, and in his hands it's accessible and fascinating. A gallery of well-developed characters helps dramatize the novel's revelations and illuminate the varying backgrounds and beliefs of those influencing defense policy. A part-time composer of electronic music, Scholz has an ear for dialogue and sound, which is made evident by his musical prose and use of realistic punctuation. Intricate and dark, Radiance is saturated with fragmented transmissions, signs, and conversations that may well resemble puzzle pieces. Where these puzzle pieces intersect we see an intertwining of fates and a bleak future. On the other hand, all that information could just be minutiae distracting us from the obvious and unavoidable. Either way, it's one more reason to investigate Radiance. --Ross Doll
From Publishers Weekly
Set in an intrepid nuclear weapons research and testing station in the middle of the desert, complete with protest banners and swinging police truncheons, this wannabe political satire treads all too familiar ground, despite the talented Scholz's inventive, high-energy prose. Leo Highet, director of the lab, derides his colleagues and hopes to build an incredibly powerful weapon, dubbed Radiance. Working under him is x-ray expert Philip Quine, harassed by public outcry and political backbiting on all sides, his sense of inconsequence so massive he can neither produce adequate research nor think critically about the dubious work he is doing. In the parking lot outside the facility, he meets a protester and falls in love with her; at home, he fights with his girlfriend, who is cheating on him. Meanwhile, defense spending rolls ahead, but the development of Radiance is unaccountably stalled. What is fascinating here is Scholz's stylistic knack for creating a clipped system-speak, derived from the blips and burps of conversation. Relations between characters are cold and unfulfilling, and character development is registered only by the protagonists' sudden shifts in situation: without much ado, they are hired and fired or start affairs and end them. Scholz's writing crackles with energy, intelligence and dark humor, but readers will recognize tones and topics heavily based on Pynchon, DeLillo et al., and wish Scholz had struck out a little farther on his own. (Feb.)Forecast: A strong endorsement from Jonathan Lethem should attract a cultish audience to this promising if unsatisfying debut.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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