Page 6 - Time Magazine-November 05, 2018
P. 6
FICTION
The imagined true story of
the father of the atom bomb
By Bethanne Patrick
Louisa HaLL Oppenheimer’s real-life timeline and
understands that fill out his humanity. He’s not simply
the words we don’t the creator of a weapon—he’s charming,
write can be just as educated and in love. Although
important as the Oppenheimer famously declared he
ones we do. In her carried no weight on his conscience
NONFICTION past novels, which from the detonation of the bombs on
Final lessons include Speak and The Japan, the man we meet in Hall’s novel
from a giant Carriage House, the is a serious person reckoning with his
poet and author earned acclaim for her impact over decades.
Stephen Hawking’s Brief ability to wield language with unusual What might have happened if
Answers to the Big Questions, precision. Once again few words go he had admitted guilt? Hall stops
published seven months after to waste in her new book, Trinity, a short of moralizing, seeing the arc
his death, offers the legendary brilliant imagining of how the details of Oppenheimer’s career as its own
theoretical physicist’s parting omitted from one notorious man’s story Aesopian gift. As an adviser to the
thoughts on the universe. might define him more fully than the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission,
—Rachel E. Greenspan
broad strokes we already know. Oppenheimer was quick to argue for
Hall uses fictional interviews with nuclear arms control, fearing unfettered
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seven characters to form a portrait proliferation if sanctions were not put
THERE IS NO GOD of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, into place. Trinity sounds a wake-up
Hawking addresses each father of the atom bomb and director of call to those who have failed to ease the
possible rebuttal to the the Manhattan Project, which created threat of planetary destruction through
question of all questions with the weapons dropped on Hiroshima a slowness to effect controls on fossil
the utmost confidence: some and Nagasaki in the closing days of fuels, other environmental dangers
people think God created World War II. We learn about “Oppie” and, indeed, nuclear weapons. If they
space and energy, Hawking through narrators like an FBI agent who took action, the world would change.
writes. “But science tells a once tailed him, a former Princeton Oppenheimer changed course in his
ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL FISHEL FOR TIME; HAWKING: MUIR VIDLER—13 PHOTO/REDUX; OPPENHEIMER: GET T Y IMAGES
different story.” secretary he once worked with and his own life—and through Hall’s imagined
great love Jean Tatlock—figures who reading of his mind, she shows us that
2 translate Hall’s invented expansions of we still can too.
AI MAY SURPASS US
Hawking predicts the invention
of “brain-computer interfaces,”
connecting human brains to the
Internet. But with innovation
comes risk, he cautions—and
we must ensure that our own
human wisdom can outsmart
the power of technology.
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WE WON’T SURVIVE ON EARTH
Evaluating the state of the
climate alongside the current
political climate, Hawking
paints a picture of a grim
future: a “Second Nuclear Age,”
as he calls it, will come with
a period of “unprecedented”
climate change. His warning:
only humanity can prevent it. Oppenheimer never reconciled his political views with the future his work created
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