The World-Mover
1950
Les Ackerman was a scientist studying a newly discovered transuranic element when his experiment went catastrophically wrong. The nuclear blast should have killed him. Instead, it left him trapped in a nightmare of his own making: visible to himself, invisible to everyone else, able to pass through walls but not to touch the world he once knew. He's a phantom observer in the aftermath of his own destruction, watching the chaos unfold while unable to intervene. Then Tansie Lee arrives with news that shatters what little Les understands about his condition. His experiment didn't just cause an explosion, it tore a hole between realities. Now three alternate worlds, each born from the branching paths of that fateful moment, are collapsing toward catastrophe. Every faction believes Les Ackerman holds the key to saving their world. The only problem is that Les has no memory of what he did, and no idea how to undo it. A haunting meditation on scientific responsibility and fractured identity, The World-Mover captures the paranoid claustrophobia of pulp SF at its most unsettling. For readers who want their science fiction spiked with existential dread.
