Snowball (Version 2)

A brilliant young physicist accidentally discovers how to generate unlimited nuclear power using materials found in any hardware store. What begins as a laboratory triumph becomes a nightmare for global economics: if anyone can build a star in their basement, what happens to oil dynasties, coal unions, and the entire infrastructure of power? Poul William Anderson, one of science fiction's most rigorous minds, asks what happens when technology democratizes the impossible. The story follows Simon Magus, whose gift becomes his curse as governments, corporations, and ordinary citizens clash over what his discovery means for civilization. It's a bracing Cold War-era meditation on technological disruption, economic upheaval, and the terrifying responsibility of giving humanity something it might not be ready to handle. Anderson's prose is precise, his science plausible enough to chill, and his ending resonates with uncomfortable truth: progress without wisdom is just a faster way to burn.