Alan Goodwin - Gravity's Chain

On one side of the front room was the small wooden desk I’d bought at a second-hand furniture shop in Whangarei. Spread across the top were pieces of paper covered with my reworked pencil equations of Einstein’s cosmological constant. This was a more modest endeavour than the spiral field maths I’d first glimpsed in the rain patterns on the window, and the chances of publication were nil—thanks to Taikon. But I didn’t care. I pondered sitting down to the last series of numbers, but it was too nice an evening, it could wait for another day. After covering Dad with a blanket I went and lay on the bank leading to the beach. Listening to the sea I lay back and watched the stars’ nightly rebirth as darkness came.

When Jack Mitchell watched streams of water pouring down a window pane after another fight with his wife, he glimpsed the infinite.

At last he grasps the elusive chain of thought which will ultimately lead to his solution of the scientific disparity between the theories of Relativity and Quantum. However, amidst the triumph of creating the radical new Superforce Theory, the young scientist’s wife has her own appointment with eternity.

Her suicide the day after Superforce’s birth begins a reckless journey for Jack. The technological implications of Superforce are immense and, as first his theory and then his life are taken over by a multinational corporation, Jack begins to unravel. With his life spinning dangerously out of control, his corporate minders, who are grooming him for a Nobel Prize and a return on their investment, send him home to New Zealand to cool off. But a rival theory emerges and in the tense months leading up to the Nobel announcement old demons re-emerge…and someone who knows him very well begins sending anonymous letters that stir painful memories…with disastrous consequences.

Alan Goodwin is a first-time novelist. He lives and works in Auckland where he is the managing partner in West Auckland’s largest legal practice.

HarperCollins Publishers

First published 2006

This edition published in 2010

HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

P.O. Box 1, Auckland

Copyright © Alan Goodwin 2006

Alan Goodwin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

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National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Goodwin, Alan, 1963-

Gravity’s chain / Alan Goodwin.

ISBN 978 1 8695 0593 X (pbk.)

ISBN 978 0 7304 4446 6 (epub)

I. Title

NZ823.3—dc 22

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