Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Final Theory
    Unavailable
    Final Theory
    Unavailable
    Final Theory
    Ebook444 pages9 hours

    Final Theory

    By Mark Alpert

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    'Einheitliche Feldtheorie'. The final words of his dying mentor will change David Swift's life forever. Within hours of hearing those words, David is arrested, interrogated and almost assassinated. But he's too busy running for his life to work out what it all means. Has he accidentally inherited Einstein's Unified Theory -- a set of equations with the power to destroy the world? Einstein died without discovering the theory. Or did he?

    Teaming up with his ex-girlfriend and an autistic teenager addicted to video games, David must ensure he survives long enough to find out the truth -- and deal with the terrifying consequences.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster UK
    Release dateDec 11, 2012
    ISBN9781471105517
    Unavailable
    Final Theory
    Author

    Mark Alpert

    Mark Alpert is a contributing editor at Scientific American and an internationally bestselling author of science thrillers. His novels for adults—Final Theory, The Omega Theory, Extinction, and The Furies—are action-packed page-turners that show the frightening potential of near-future technologies.

    Read more from Mark Alpert

    Related to Final Theory

    Related ebooks

    Suspense For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Rent Arlington Hall’s Brain: The implant would make him a brilliant pianist for 24 hours.

      Jan 15, 2015

      Eight Hours To Go Thorne hesitated. The clinic’s storefront consisted of a glass elevator that went only down. Below the earth, into the unknown. A sign on its door read in elegant silver script: “Rent a Brain Today, Genius Guaranteed.” Thorne could

      14 min read

    • Article

      Notes From The Struggle

      Nov 10, 2022

      “That’s the thing,” my friend Tomas said. “They always get it wrong. Every time, they get it wrong. They always get the wrong people. Once we get out of this,” he spread his arms and shook his head, as if to say—This colossal fuck-fest of a mess we’v

      15 min read

    • Article

      Lay Your Burden Down

      Mar 1, 2019

      Lay Your Burden Down
      15 min read

    • Article

      Movement and Flow

      May 10, 2019

      A FEW YEARS AGO my mother had a phase in which every three or four months something would short in her heart or brain, and she’d slump to the floor. Whatever did this left no trace; we guessed some kind of seizure. By the time I’d find her in the eme

      11 min read

    • Article

      Cruel Means, Bitter Ends

      Nov 10, 2021

      “In order for this speech to mean anything to me, I’ll need to dispense with the usual demagoguery and, instead, make an attempt at honesty. With this in mind, there is one thing I have to make clear. I’m not in this race to serve your interests, but

      12 min read

    • Article

      Quantum Radio

      Feb 22, 2023

      Quantum Radio
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Ladies Book Club

      Apr 10, 2024

      “Our brains are shaped with the capability to care deeply but also to kill. This deep ambivalence is potentially problematic. A society filled with people who are inherently very compassionate and very violent might prove unstable.”1 1Emile Bruneau,

      25 min read

    • Article

      Foul Matter

      Oct 4, 2017

      Foul Matter
      5 min read

    • Article

      Dinner with Martin Amis

      Oct 3, 2019

      Dinner with Martin Amis
      9 min read

    • Article

      Mike Scalise

      Aug 16, 2017

      The Brand New Catastrophe (Sarabande Books, January), a funny and intimate memoir about illness, the body, and family, and Scalise’s diagnosis, at age twenty-four, of a brain tumor and a rare hormonal disorder. Editor: Ariel Lewiton. Agent: Janet Sil

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Il’ja Rákoš

      Dec 10, 2017

      One winter I came down with pneumonia twice in five months. The doctors, with my semi-conscious consent, were ready to try anything. One thing they did try was a technique “to warm up the lungs.” It involved a canvas corset that looked like it had be

      8 min read

    • Article

      Mike Scalise

      Aug 16, 2017

      The Brand New Catastrophe (Sarabande Books, January), a funny and intimate memoir about illness, the body, and family, and Scalise’s diagnosis, at age twenty-four, of a brain tumor and a rare hormonal disorder. Editor: Ariel Lewiton. Agent: Janet Sil

      2 min read

    • Article

      Killing Time

      May 8, 2019

      Killing Time
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Secretion

      May 5, 2022

      The Art Of Secretion
      8 min read

    • Article

      Shelf Life

      Sep 2, 2021

      Shelf Life
      4 min read

    • Article

      Over The Top

      Nov 7, 2017

      Over The Top
      7 min read

    • Article

      Happy Fortunate People

      Jul 28, 2022

      Happy Fortunate People
      28 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Final Theory

    3.5/5

    10 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Fairly easy going thriller with a scientific twist to it.
    • 4/5
      Loved the mixture of science and suspense. Very much want to recommend this as an alternate history--what if Einstein had discovered the unified field theory but realized what might happen if it fell into the wrong hands? The author does a nice job of giving the reader enough information about the characters so you care about what happens to them. The science is mixed in and obviously the author knows his stuff. Looking forward to his next book.
    • 3/5
      Lots of dead bodies, but not a bad thriller. It held my interest through the last page, even though I kept thinking there were too many lucky breaks and way too much killing. But it's a thriller, so that's what one can expect. Interesting bits about the physics.
    • 3/5
      My husband has little patience for television if he can see where the story is going. It's not unusual for him to sigh twenty minutes into an hour-long drama, wave dismissively at the television and predict what's going to happen in a disgusted tone. He's often right and generally cranky because he feels the writers didn't do their jobs if he can see it all before it plays out. I'm more patient , especially if I am in any way invested in the characters. I'm usually okay seeing how something plays out even if I'm relatively sure what will happen. But in reading Final Theory, I felt like my husband often does watching television. I knew how scenes would unfold as soon as they were set up and I saw plot twists coming hundreds of pages before they were revealed. And the fact that I did irritated me greatly, probably because there is almost no character development here to speak of. (It should be said, I suppose, that this is a thriller, and that thrillers aren't generally known for their characterization, and that I'm not usually a fan of the genre.) That lack of character development might have been okay if the plot had been sharp enough to keep me entertained or if the result of all of the running about and killing people (seriously--even for a book of this type, the body count is ridiculous) weren't that the general situation returned to exactly what it was at the start of the thing. If you like physics and the idea of a Theory of Everything (the presence of which being what drew me to this book in the first place), go read physics. If you are a huge fan of the thriller genre, you may find something here you like. Otherwise, skip it.
    • 5/5
      i read the reviews and they said this book was too academic or technical. it could be, but to me it was a very plain way of explaining string theory. of course i'm a fan of string theory and qntum physics. it is a story about a guy who wanted to be a physicist but finally the math got to be too much and he became a writer of the histories of great scientists. i thought this was incredibly well done and can't wait to have my mom read it. it doesn't condensce all the technical info together so i feel it's a very interesting great book. it's based on the idea that einstein did discover Einheitliche Feldtheorie or unified field theory which is string theory. but after the contribution his relativity theory made to the atom bomb he hides it. once someone discovers it's out there it a race to keep it from the enemy and find the thoery before they are killed. a couple of things. the writer of this book actually is an editor for Scientific American and did his thesis on an application of einsteins theory of relativity. there was a lot of research into this book. also alot of the book consists of developed theories. so if you have interest at all you want to read this book. if you don't it was still a great thriller and kept you on the move.
    • 4/5
      FINAL THEORY's dust jacket includes a gushing review by thriller writer Douglas Preston, who not only exclaims that the book is "a stupendous read!" but rather cattily suggests that "If I were Michael Crichton, I'd be packing my bags and heading for a quiet retirement in Tahiti."Don't buy your ticket yet, Mr. Crichton. Your position as contemporary literature's premier writer of science-based thrillers is still secure.Not that Alpert's book is bad -- quite the contrary. It is a fast-paced thriller with an excellent mix of science, technology, and interesting characters. But it is also predictable, almost to a fault; and hews closely to the typical formula of such books. The big, bad U.S. government, controlled by a group of maverick conservatives (including a thinly disguised Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld), wants to get its hands on a vital scientific secret -- in this case, Einstein's mythical unified field theory -- the theory that not only explains literally every particle in the universe, but is potentially able to be used to unleash unbelievable and devastating power. Well, by gosh, by golly, who wouldn't want to get their hands on such a formula? As it turns out, not all that many folks -- though one would expect a landscape simply teeming with agents of foreign powers and representatives of terrorist groups. Nope. It seems that there is only one other shadowy figure determined to acquire this potentially unlimited power. The evil-doers that thriller readers have come to expect are conspicuously absent in this book. While that may make FINAL THEORY a refreshing change of pace for some readers, I found the absence of other players oddly unrealistic. Another jarring touch, which is never fully explained, is the reason for all this interest in a theory that Einstein searched for over fifty years ago. Why the sudden, frantic interest in this theory now? Even at the denouement, when all is revealed, and the master puppeteer emerges from the shadows, too much is left unexplained. One madman's jealous rage seems too thin an answer to adequately cover the questions that remain.Add in one brutal Russian ex-secret service agent, who leaves a trail of some dozen or more corpses in his wake, a corrupt FBI agent, a beautiful black string theorist, and two, count 'em, two children in jeopardy; sprinkle with a generous helping of scientific exposition, stir well, and voila! You now have your standard thriller.Better written than many, admittedly, but still too shallow and predictable for Michael Crichton to experience any serious qualms about his throne.A fast-paced summer read, but not anywhere as earth-shaking as the subject matter seems to demand.
    • 3/5
      Wow! This was a page turner. I appreciate authors who have backgrounds in what they are writing about (i.e: Kathy Reichs & forensic anthropology). I can usually count on accuracy and I learn about non-fiction themes via novels - a neat way to learn difficult concepts. This is the case with this novel that discusses physics (Einstein's theories)and the 'Theory of Everything'.