Novels About Physics: Find Your Next Read!

[rania yassin]

well i really like reading novels so i was wondering if there's any novels about physics that are good ? :P

 

[Doug Huffman]

Particularly classic hard science fiction. I still enjoy Robert. L. Forward.

 

[Khashishi]

If you are looking for science fiction, check here: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-science-fiction-novels.576355/
If you are looking for nonfiction, Chaos: the Making of a New Science, by James Gleick, is a good read.

 

[bigfooted]

And of course 'Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman'.

 

[mpresic]

"Timescape" by Gregory Benford

 

[Michael Mann]

:D

 

[jedishrfu]

Ringworld byLarry Niven generated a lot of Physics discussion that got incorporated into his later Ringworld sequels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld

 

[epenguin]

#3 and #4 are not novels.

I liked, enjoyed may be not quite the word, "Night thoughts of a classical physicist".

There are quite a number of novels, plays etc. about the Manhattan project. Not totally and not meant to be totally fiction. There is "The Man who would be God", a personal swipe. I've read 2 or 3 times "Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry".

Top class literature is Primo Levi's "The Periodic System" - it's chemistry so broaden your horizons!

Regarding which, the phrase "he's one of those physicists who thinks Science is a branch of physics" occurs, I think, in the novel "Mine own exceutioner" by Nigel Balchin. More famous by the same author is "The small back room", both made into films, perhaps a bit distant is location and time from what you are looking for, and are supposedly middlebrow novels that actually are not that comfortable.

"The Quest" by CP Snow I remember as much better than any others of his, a quite convincing situationing in the research process as well as in the scientific society of his time and place; the narrator seems close to the author and his most vivid character is a very thin disguise of a scientist all informed readers would identify without hesitation. It is scientific-political while his others are more so, much concerned with the "corridors of power" in government and academia, somewhat sychophantically. Again some of it relates to the Manhattan project and its follow-on.

The two italicised phrases from the book titles have also entered common language.

I thought that Swiss guy who dramatised Bohr and Heisenberg etc. then and elsewhere has done the world no great favour, but it's up for discussion.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I just stumbled across this at the library today:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005M4ZB1W/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Seems to have some kind of intrigue concerning Tycho Brahe and Keppler as part of the plot.