The Gottingen Accident by James Mordechai

 

What if three famous scientists with superhero powers do team up to fight a villain that wants to subvert the very fabric of the Universe by using non-Euclidean geometry? What if the Germans won the Great War and the 1917 Bolshevik revolution never took place? Time is not always a straight line and sometimes it can expand and contract. Then, Charles Darwin could change the evolutionary destiny of any living being and be coeval with Marie Curie that in turn could see through walls thanks to her X-Ray vision. A terrible accident, the Gottingen Accident, made them all. It made them like this. Superhumans. Or maybe just monsters.

The Göttingen Accident is one of those books that shouldn't work, but soooo does.

The story follows our heroes, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin and Erwin Schrödinger (oh, and his cat Tabby) as they battle two evil mathematicians, Riemann and Gauss, and their mad artist M.C. Escher.

One day, Riemann and co. attack the local university with a strange weapon that kills a large number of scientists, but also leaves others with super powers.

Marie Curie gets the power of x-rays, Charles Darwin gets the power to mutate nature and Schroedinger gets…. Absolutely nothing coz he was away when the accident happened. However, his cat is full of surprises.

I must say, The Göttingen Accident is one batshit crazy book and I loved it. It's like a nerdy avengers story with a heavy dose of Lovecraft thrown in for that little bit of extra spice. It's a short book and its length works in its favour as it immediately goes into its action packed sequences as our scientific superheroes attempt to stop Riemann taking over the world with Non Euclidean geometry.

You would think that at one hundred and fifty pages long there is very little page space to do much else but get the main bulk of the story in, but like his titular bad guys and their grasp on the laws of physics, James Mordechai manages to fit a whole load of character development as well as a pretty fast paced plot. Now, there are obvious favourites on this book, Tabby the not dead/sometimes dead cat is one and the other stand out is the warped MC Escher who with his ability to make portals to geometrically insane landscapes is the other.

The Story itself is one that is quite familiar, stop the baddies before they destroy the world. However, whilst the plot is uncomplicated, this works in its favour as it ramps up the pace and impetus of the story to hurl you towards the end of the book.

The characters themselves are representations of the things that they did in life, for instance, Darwin can manipulate evolution to make freakish monsters and Marie Curie has radioactive hands that generate power and x - rays. Similarly, the powers of the terrible trio of Escher, Reimann and Gauss mirror what they were famous for.

The Göttingen Accident is a completely bonkers book, but in a good way, and if you fancy a quick unfettered adventure story The Gottingen accident is definitely your book.