Schrodinger's Ball
by Adam Felber
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Windows Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS X Tiger Features
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Windows 98+, Tablet PC, Pocket PC 2003 Features
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Windows PC, Palm, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, SymbianOS, Blackberry, iLiad, eBookMan, and more. Features
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All Palm & Pocket PC handheld devices plus all Windows and Macintosh computers. Features
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Schrodinger's Ball Summary
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Chapter 1 There’s a cat in a box in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s about three-quarters of a mile from the firehouse in Central Square, which means that if someone launched a rescue operation now, the trucks could be there in half an hour. Or so. Boston’s roads started out in the colonial days as tracks and paths, routes for people and horses and cattle to travel from All Over to certain Important Places. In the fullness of time, the roads widened, lengthened, and were finally paved for the automobile, that newfangled machine whose basic operation still confounds most Boston natives. So it’s pointless to speak of Boston’s “grid.” Boston’s roads were never meant to be urban thoroughfares—they intersect at odd, often precipitous angles, with frequently interesting results from an urban-design standpoint. Often, three or four roads will intersect in more or less the same place. When this happened in an area unburdened with history, landmarks, or valuable real estate, the twentieth-century Bos- tonians created enormous disks of pavement where the roads collided, which they called “rotaries.” The traffic laws governing how you enter and exit a rotary are poorly understood and rarely followed. Fortunately, the fact that a rotary is at the intersection of many roads ensures that there will be easy access for emergency vehicles, which spend a great deal of time cleaning up the messes that happen inside rotaries. However, when many roads intersect in places that are historic, landmark-laden, or filled with valuable real estate (a set of conditions that can be best described as “almost everywhere”), the planners and pavers of Boston opted to create Squares. From a design standpoint, this roughly means, “Do nothing and name the place after the principal reason why we can’t have a rotary here.” ... |
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“Tender, hilarious, and packed with delightful surprises . . . If Einstein and John Cleese had written a novel together, this would be it.” –Joseph Weisberg, author of 10th Grade Four friends set out into the night in Cambridge, Massachusetts, undeterred by the fact that one of them might actually be dead. Deb has perfected the half-hour orgasm. Grant, a geek, desperately desires Deb. Depressed Arlene has just improbably slept with Johnny, their leader, who recently and accidentally shot himself to death. But is he (or anyone) alive or dead until he’s observed to be by someone else? Maybe not, according to Dr. Erwin Schrödinger, the renowned physicist (1887—1961) who is, strangely, still ambling through the Ivy League town, offering opinions and proofs about how our perceptions can bring to life–and, in turn, reduce and destroy–other people and ourselves. And what does Schrödinger have to do with the President of Montana, who just declared war on the rest of the country, or the Harvard Square bag lady who is rewriting the history of the world? What’s the significance of the cat in the box, the “miracle molecule,” or the discarded piece of luncheon meat? Answer: All will collide by the end of this hypersmart, supersexy, madly moving novel that crosses structural inventiveness with easygoing accessibility, the United States with our internal states of being, philosophy with fiction. In Adam Felber’s dazzling debut, science and humanity collide in a kaleidoscopic story that is as hilarious as death and as heartbreaking as love. Praise: “A jangle of provocative absurdities playing off a pair of lovers so winning that readers, like the audiences at the old Hollywood romantic comedies, will all but rent ladders to uncross the stars that guide and misguide their efforts…. [Schrodinger’s Ball is] a romantic fantasy in three-quarter time, as brainy as it is airy, and unhinged either way.”–The New York Times “Felber has done the impossible: he’s made quantum theory seem hysterically funny and Cambridge, Massachusetts seem like a place of strange magic. Schrödinger’s Ball is a great read that will blind you with science and laughter.”–Chris Regan, writer for The Daily Show and co-author of America (The Book) “[A] crackling comic novel…[Felber] frolics in the fields of science....His wit and linguistic acrobatics make this clever mind-bender worth the ride.–Booklist “It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s got heart. All this and an umlaut too! Schrödinger’s Ball is thoroughly lively.”–Roy Blount Jr., author of Roy Blount’s Book of Southern Humor “If Einstein and John Cleese had written a novel together, this would be it. Felber creates a world that is both completely real and totally enchanted. Tender, hilarious, and packed with delightful surprises, Schrödinger’s Ball is even more original than other really original books.”–Joseph Weisberg, author of Tenth Grade “There’s no uncertainty about it. Schrödinger’s Ball once and for all proves the Adam Felber theory of comic novel writing: a book can be rollickingly funny, sharply satirical, romantic, and endearing–and involve quantum physics.”–Mo Rocca, author of All the Presidents’ Pets: The Story of One Reporter Who Refused to Roll Over ”Schrödinger’s Ball is as funny as hell, charming and kind, and perceptive and moving. Adam Felber has an amazing feel for the interior lives of his characters, even while using the shifting points-of-view of a David Foster Wallace.”–Pet |
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