Mathematician Kurt Gödel, atomic physicist Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein are among the cast of Casti's new novel (after The Cambridge Quintet), a speculative recreation of the debates that took place in the late 1940s at the Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study. The book, which Casti describes as "scientific fiction," is composed mainly of dialogues between the scientists and mathematicians as they ponder the limits of human logic. These discussions aren't entirely abstract; the professors consider the philosophical and psychological implications of nascent computer technology and the atom bomb, among other inventions. Casti laces the book with descriptions of the IAS, the "platonic heaven" of the title, where the best thinkers of their day are able to do their research and talk to one another free from the other responsibilities of academia. T.S. Eliot, the lone poet spending "a term in Princeton" with the scientists, makes a cameo appearance during one of the afternoon teas at which the researchers gather daily. Casti knows his subject and explains it lucidly; the discussions of physics and math are reasonably accessible and quite engaging. But his attempts to make the scientists into characters rely on stiff, clichéd descriptions ("Eliot's poetic soul cringed at this interchange"), and the conversational framework is stilted: "Oppenheimer turned to Eliot and asked in a resonant directorial voice, 'Well, Tom, I see that Pauli and Weyl haven't yet managed to reconcile themselves in the realm of physics. What do you think about the aesthetic differences between the poet and the physicist?'" The book doesn't quite succeed as fiction, but readers eager to explore the principles of theoretical physics and math may appreciate Casti's reconstruction of the great debates. 3-city author tour. (May)
