Cosm, by Gregory Benford

I very much wanted to like this book, but it really fell short of my expectations. In a way it is similar to the author's "Timescape", in which you find a central character who is an academic about to stumble upon some major breakthrough in physics. In Cosm, this character is a female black physicist - she runs an experiment in a particle accelerator and discovers that as a result an artifact was created. It could be either an entire universe contained in a basketball size sphere or it may be a window, a wormhole connection to this other universe. (You'll have to read the book to find out which.)

My main expectation was that the book was going to be hard science fiction, as "Timescape". There some of it in there, but not enough to keep me excited. Benford spent a great effort exploring the hardships the main character would face which would have been motivated by race and gender issues. His effort is laudable, but not his results. The voice he found for this character rings very plastic, very cookie cutter, and somewhat untrue. His character's search for love, for style, for professional recognition takes center stage and dominates the text rather than create a human background for a story of scientific speculation.