Science Fiction Writer
ROBERT J. SAWYER
Hugo and Nebula Winner

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75th Anniversary of the
Birth of the Atomic Age

Book an Expert Interview!

Award-winning author ROBERT J. SAWYER
has over 800 radio and TV interviews
under his belt

The atomic age was born 75 years ago in 1945. Commemorate these important anniversaries with an expert interview subject:

• Thursday, July 16, 2020: 75 years since the first atomic bomb exploded in the Trinity test in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

• Thursday, August 6, 2020: 75 years since the first use of an atomic bomb, destroying the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

• Sunday, August 9, 2020: 75 years since the last use of an atomic bomb in war, devastating Nagasaki.

Perimeter Institute physicist Lee Smolin, the author of The Trouble with Physics, says, "I know the history of this period well and I'm one or two degrees of separation from many of these people. Sawyer's portrayals ring true to me."

Gregory Benford, physicist at UC Irvine, agrees: "The feel and detail of the Manhattan Project figures is deep and well done. I knew many of these physicists, and Sawyer nails them accurately."

• Following Hitler's suicide, many Manhattan Project scientists did not want to continue the atomic bomb. The initial fear had been that the Nazis would get it before the Allies did, and, with the war in Europe over, they saw no reason to continue.

• The Japanese had been making overtures to surrender through diplomatic back channels for over a year before the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Had their one demand been accepted, the war in Japan would have ended in 1944.

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt shocked the hell out of Winston Churchill by deviating from their agreed script and demanding "unconditional" surrender from Japan in a live radio broadcast. Churchill only subsequently backed that demand so as not to be seen as contradicting the American leader.

• In the end, despite the posturing about "unconditional" surrender, the Allies gave the Japanese the one and only thing they'd wanted a year earlier, namely letting their divine emperor Hirohito retain his throne (which he did until his death in 1989).

• Leo Szilard, who got Einstein to write to FDR urging the creation of an atomic weapon, circulated a petition calling for a demonstration of the bomb for Japanese experts, rather than its use on Japanese cities. General Leslie Groves had the petition branded Top Secret and hidden away — so that the bomb could be dropped to end World War II, establishing a post-war order with America as the only superpower.

• As an outgrowth of the Manhattan Project, the US was developing an atomic-bomb-propelled rocket called Orion that could have put humans on Mars by 1965. The Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned nuclear explosions in space, scuttled the project.

More About Sawyer's Book:

"Incredibly realistic: the characters, locations, the era, and even the science. I felt like I was back in Los Alamos — and I should know: I worked there! Breathlessly riveting; Sawyer pulls it off masterfully." —Doug Beason, former Associate Laboratory Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory

"Sawyer portrays brilliantly and poignantly the struggles of the scientists who started it all and were consequently obliged to bear an unbearable burden." —James Christie, Chair, Project Ploughshares, member organization of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

The Toronto Star calls him "Canada's answer to Michael Crichton" and The New York Times says he's a writer of "boundless confidence and bold scientific extrapolation."

The Oppenheimer Alternative, coming June 2, 2020, is his 24th novel.

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