Snowball

Simon Arch is a shy, brilliant physicist working at a kitchen-table laboratory with his wife, Elizabeth, when an experiment in dielectric materials yields something astonishing: capacitite, a cheap substance that stores immense electrical charge and can be made almost anywhere. Suddenly, the humble home lab near Westfield, Massachusetts, has produced a breakthrough that could replace batteries, reshape transportation, and upend the entire energy economy. As Arch begins to grasp the scale of what he has invented, the promise of abundance collides with the realities of patents, profit, and control. Poul Anderson turns that invention into a fast-moving battle over science, society, and power. Corporate emissaries, the FBI, reporters, and desperate citizens all converge on Arch as capacitite threatens oil, utilities, and government authority. Elizabeth's wit and resolve help him weather the pressure, while Arch's own idealism hardens into a fierce defense of individual freedom against bureaucracy and conformity. But when the Cold War stakes become clear, he is drawn into a covert government plan to use his discovery in a dangerous struggle behind the Iron Curtain, where scientific genius may alter not only the market, but the fate of nations. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.