The Trigger

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The Weapon to End All Weapons

Legendary science fiction icon Arthur C. Clarke, who in recent years has cowritten several Rama novels with Gentry Lee (Rama II, Garden of Rama, Rama Revealed), collaborates here for the first time with Michael Kube-McDowell on a powerful, near-future dark thriller. The authors manage to flesh out a believable earth not unlike our own that is alive with many of the same social quandaries, cross-fertilizing their narrative with intriguing speculation and slick scenes of gripping action. More than anything, though, The Trigger is an engrossing examination of the effect of sophisticated weaponry on social values and conduct that will keep the reader nailed to the page.

In the early 21st century, physicist Jeffrey Horton and several of his esteemed colleagues, believing they've discovered an antigravity device, instead make another startling scientific breakthrough: Their machine creates a particle wave that will instantly destroy all explosive nitrates. The implications are clear: With this new weapon, called the Trigger, all guns and bombs are rendered useless. Horton and his immediate supervisor, Karl Brohier, are aware that the potential for scientific corruption and mishandling is tremendous.

Soon the group of physicists and the owner of the laboratory, wealthy Mark Breland, are faced with deciding what to do with the Trigger. Do they offer it as an alternative to war in the hopes that armed conflict will become a thing of the past? Allow the United States to reign supreme over the rest of the world? Or destroy the device and forget their breakthrough altogether? Debate rages between pacifists and those who are proarmament until the day when a portable Trigger is used to decimate a vicious street gang terrorizing the sister of one of the scientists. Soon the military becomes involved, forcing Horton to go underground and leaving Brohier to continue his experiments on the Trigger wave effect alone. Eventually pacifist senators, assassins, and fanatical militiamen all become involved, each group fighting for their own beliefs in an effort to shape the face of the future.

Clarke and Kube-McDowell are at ease in melding their styles and techniques, flowing between the high-tech elements and the taut, credible action-packed circumstances propelling the story forward. The authors are capable of wringing great levels of tension from the twisting plot. Protagonists are placed in dangerous situations that anchor characters to their personal belief systems despite all the conflict taking place around them. Clarke and Kube-McDowell have given us a noirish, hardboiled technothriller that pulls out all the stops and roars from steadily escalating antagonism to an exhilarating, and brutal, climax. Although the ending is highly frenetic, the authors capably bring together all the various threads and philosophical doctrines. They not only grab the reader's interest but also fire one's thoughts on how science leads to social and political change.

The reader might be fooled into thinking that the raw edginess and suspense elements in The Trigger might pale in comparison to the SF plot devices or become lost in all the political debates occurring in the novel. That's not the case at all: Clarke and Kube-McDowell's unraveling of the crucial subplots is nearly flawless. They combine issues of a similar future so that The Trigger seethes with the same moral and social delirium we're already experiencing where urban violence and gun control is concerned. It's extremely rare to find a novel that works on so many levels at once -- it excites the imagination but also captures the substance of the ethical dilemmas that affect the entire world.

—Tom Piccirilli

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

One of the grand old men of SF has teamed up with Kube-McDowell (Tyrant's Test, etc.) to imagine a near-future in which all traditional weapons that use gunpowder are rendered obsolete. Out of the blue, young physicist Jeffrey Horton has been chosen to join Nobelist Karl Brohier at a laboratory named Terabyte. While Horton pursues the "stimulated emission of gravitons," a number of detonations rock the lab one day. Is this yet another terrorist attack in an America racked by violence? But it's gun clips and fireworks that exploded when Horton activated his experimental machine. After some experimentation, the lab team realizes that the device, shortly named the Trigger, causes virtually every traditional explosive within range to self-destruct. What follows is a detailed exploration of the effects of the Trigger on domestic America. Should it be made public? Who should be told first: the army, the president, the international community? To prevent being silenced by those whose power may be threatened, Brohier and Horton contact Grover Wilman, an iconoclastic U.S. senator with a strong antigun record. Wilman in turn leads them to President Mark Breland, and the full complexity of negotiating among the many factions invested in guns begins. Clarke and Kube-McDowell work through the pro and con arguments over the possession of guns and other gunpowder-based weapons, with care and research evident in every debate as they skillfully assess the tricky territory between individualism and collective trust. The authors are savvy enough never to choose easy answers, and though this political SF thriller occasionally slows down to depict detailed governmental negotiations and private deliberations, the unpredictable effects of the Trigger lend the familiar issue of gun control new urgency and excitement. (Dec.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Physicist Jeffrey Horton discovers the principles that lead to a device capable of disarming guns, bombs, and other explosives within its effective radius. Intended as a possible deterrent to armed conflict, Horton's invention--known as the Trigger--soon falls prey to those who see it as the ultimate weapon. Coauthors Clarke and Kube-McDowell have combined their considerable talents to explore the ethical problems that arise when idealists and cynics clash over the proper use of scientific research. Using the sf thriller as their forum, the authors have produced a thought-provoking, suspenseful tale that should appeal to fans of near-future technothrillers as well as speculative fiction. Highly recommended. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Denver Post

Destined to be one of the greatest fantasy series ever written.

Kirkus Reviews

First collaboration from SF grandmaster Clarke (3001: The Final Odyssey, etc.) and Kube-McDowell (The Quiet Pools, 1990). Physicist Jeffrey Horton tests what he hopes is an antigravity device, but instead his machine generates a field that detonates nitrate-based fuels and explosives! Horton and his boss, Karl Brohier, take their Trigger to President Mark Breland. Breland's dilemma: bury the notion—and risk someone else discovering it? Keep it exclusively for the US—but for how long? Or inform the world? What follows, though punctuated by dramatic illustrations, is largely a prolonged debate between enlightened peaceniks and old-style military mind-sets, armaments and gun lobbies, armed hate groups, and organized crime, demonstrating that what's invented cannot be uninvented. Fur and lawsuits fly. At last Horton and Brohier make a theory breakthrough: matter is composed of energy inside an information envelope, and the Trigger alters that information. (This, unfortunately, is as persuasive as it gets.) The military contemplate using nukes in their all-out efforts to negate the Trigger effect. Horton resigns in disgust and disappears. Brohier invents the Jammer, a significant upgrade. An evil reactionary assassinates a pro-Trigger senator on live TV. Nevertheless, crime continues to fall, while Americans develop a sense of community. Finally, crazy backwoods militiamen grab the reclusive Horton and torture him to reveal the supposed secrets behind what they regard as conspiracies and tricks. Heavy, preachy, and only intermittently absorbing: the authors get their message across, but it's about as subtle as a plummeting piano.