About this audiobook
Engineer Garin's powerful invention offers possibilities that quickly become entangled with the pursuit of wealth and authority. People interested in controlling the device recognise that its importance extends beyond a single technical achievement. Scientific ingenuity becomes part of a contest in which commercial ambition and the desire for political influence reinforce one another.
Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy gives the speculative adventure a setting shaped by competing interests and unstable alliances. The inventor's confidence in his own exceptional position encounters the practical calculations of others. Each apparent opportunity introduces new forms of dependence, making the ability to command a technology different from the ability to control its consequences.
The novel explores ambition, power and the responsibilities attached to invention. Its dramatic premise invites readers to follow an energetic struggle over an extraordinary device while considering what happens when technical possibility is treated as a justification for deciding the future of people who have had no part in choosing it.
