Help! Book read in '70s about Absolute Zero for X-MAS gift!!!

[ktphone]

I CANNOT find this book for the life of me. It's for my dad who read it sometime in the early '70s. From what I can remember it sounds like an awesome and interesting book.

It's about a group of scientist who are studying absolute zero. There's something where they can't look directly at whatever they are trying to get to read absolute zero temperature or they go insane. There's a women scientist who is pregnant and she looks directly at the absolute zero something. She goes insane and spends the rest of her days in an asylum but her child is born just fine. He has these special powers and can travel through different dimensions or to different planets through portals... ?

Anyway, I've been looking for forever and I know this would mean so much to him. PLEASE! If you have any ideas or leads I could follow please post them.

Thank you so much!

 

[Zadkiel]

This sounds kind of familiar... I've been searching for years for a novel I read in the 1960s that sounds a bit like this. There is a group of scientists working on teleportation. They're using protein molecules as memory cores to store info about bodies they want to teleport. This branches off (I can't recall how) into research about absolute zero. They cool a block of tungsten metal to absolute zero, at which point it becomes wavery, something they can't look at straight, and it also becomes a portal to alternate universes. Some of these universes are so different from ours that a glimpse of them is more than the mind can take, and the glimpser goes insane. They try to pass objects into the other universes; a tennis ball comes back inside out, with the fuzz on the inside; a pencil comes back inside out, a thin layer of graphite around a core of wood. The researchers eventually develop portals into other universes; at one point someone travels into a universe that has reverse entropy, where hot things get hotter and cold things get colder. At least one of the alternate universes has intelligent life in it, and they attempt to communicate with our universe. This is where the child who can see multiple universes without going insane comes in--but I can't quite remember how.

I know these are strange and random details that don't add up to much of a plot description--but this is all I can remember about this book. I would dearly love to read it again, as an adult, but the title and author have long since fled my memory.

If anyone can recognize these details and provide a bibliographic reference, that would be great!

Zadkiel

 

[Durandal]

This sounds kind of familiar... I've been searching for years for a novel I read in the 1960s that sounds a bit like this. There is a group of scientists working on teleportation. They're using protein molecules as memory cores to store info about bodies they want to teleport. This branches off (I can't recall how) into research about absolute zero. They cool a block of tungsten metal to absolute zero, at which point it becomes wavery, something they can't look at straight, and it also becomes a portal to alternate universes. Some of these universes are so different from ours that a glimpse of them is more than the mind can take, and the glimpser goes insane. They try to pass objects into the other universes; a tennis ball comes back inside out, with the fuzz on the inside; a pencil comes back inside out, a thin layer of graphite around a core of wood. The researchers eventually develop portals into other universes; at one point someone travels into a universe that has reverse entropy, where hot things get hotter and cold things get colder. At least one of the alternate universes has intelligent life in it, and they attempt to communicate with our universe. This is where the child who can see multiple universes without going insane comes in--but I can't quite remember how.

I know these are strange and random details that don't add up to much of a plot description--but this is all I can remember about this book. I would dearly love to read it again, as an adult, but the title and author have long since fled my memory.

If anyone can recognize these details and provide a bibliographic reference, that would be great!

Zadkiel

I VIVIDLY remember reading this book, sitting on a big green stuffed chair in my parent's house when I was a kid in the '70s.

The story, the images of the inside-out tennis ball and pencil, the multiple universes that drive people insane -- I can even picture the cover of the edition I read (mostly green, sort of semi-abstract art of a human figure stepping into a rectangular portal of some kind).

I've long thought this book was by Lester Del Rey, and called something like "The _______ Dimension", but looking over his bibliography, I don't see such a book.

I'll keep trying to remember more...

 

[Cliffystones]

Hello,

Although I see that this is an old thread, I joined these forums for the express purpose of trying to find out the title of this very story! I read it as a young teen in the early 1970's.

Since I can't help with the title, I thought I would add what I remember to see if it sparks anyone's memory.

I remember the book to consist of 3 parts. in the first part the scientists are doing the below sub-zero experiments. They punch a hole in a universe with 4 spatial dimensions. The girl who looks into it only fakes her insanity. She goes on to travel between the other dimension and ours, raising a child from infancy in both dimensions so his brain will develop to understand them both. A being in the other dimension does the same thing.

In the second part there are scientists working on "transporter" technology, but they are unknowingly wreaking havoc on the other dimension. The beings in the other dimension start grabbing "chunks" of our world (I specifically remember a chunk of Long Island disappearing) in an attempt to stop the experiments. The two children from opposite dimensions act as negotiators. This results in an agreement so that the 4-dimensional folks will grab freight from our dimension on Earth, walk a few feet in 4-dimension-land, and push it out on Mars, and vice-versa!

I believe that there was a third part, but I can't recall much, only it might have had to do with furthering the dimensional transporting to include intergalactic travel.

I also seem to remember that those bio-organic devices used in the transporter were called "Hyundai Plates", but that could be old age .

I sure hope that somebody who knows the title to this story stumbles across this thread!

 

[Ursa major]

I recall this book (also from the Seventies). I don't recall portals as such. What I remember is that the girl could "turn a corner", but not in nromal three-dimensional space, and find herself in a parallel world. (My memory - which can play tricks, so this may be nonsense - tells me that the girl had purple eyes; well, something about her was purple.) Thinking about it, her first experiences of her talent were those of being able to travle long distances in a few steps; she saw shadowy things - beings? - on her journey; in effect, she was using a parallel world to take shortcuts. Only later did she become able to enter those worlds (that world?) completely. I think she met a boy in the parallel world (which may have been our Earth) and they had problems with the authorities. (And - and again this may be some nonsense - with keeping clothes on after transits.)

Sad to say, I can't recall the title of the book. (And I didn't know that there were sequels.)

 

[Cliffystones]

The purple eyes! Yes, I remember that now as well. I thought that it was the being from the 4-dimensional universe that had them though.

I also seem to remember that the head of the sub-zero experiment had realized that the woman was faking insanity, and was angry at her for not "coming clean" and describing what she saw in the parallel world.

 

[Cliffystones]

Re: Help! Book read in '70s about Absolute Zero for X-MAS gift!!! Hurray, I found it!

I'm so excited! I've spent hours on meta search engines trying every combination of keywords I could could think of and it finally paid off!!!

This book is called "The Universe Between" by Alan E. Nourse


Boy this made my day. Now I hope that I can find a copy .

Cliffystones

 

[Cliffystones]

My apologies to the forum moderators. My intent in posting information about a web link to this book was only to provide others with more information and "pay it forward".

I now see where I need to make 10 posts to be able to insert links or e-mail other members directly. I intend to continue as a member of this forum and to contribute when and where I can.

In lieu of me posting 7 extra filler posts, I would just like to ask the moderator(s) to please make sure that the other members who started and replied to this thread are given the information I discovered.

Many Thanks,
Cliffystones

 

[Ursa major]

I thought it was a post count of 15, but the principle is the same.


And thanks for finding the book title. I've (vaguely**) wondered what it was for years.


EDIT: Although looking at the blurb on http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/n/alan-e-nourse/universe-between.htm, I'm not sure it's the book I recall.



** - Hence no Book Search request.

 

[Cliffystones]

Ursa,

The link you posted sums up what I remember to be the second part of the book.

If you Google the title, you will find another write-up by someone named "Cloggie" that describes the whole novel as I remember it. The write-up goes on to say that the novel was "patched together" from a collection of short stories.

 

[Ursa major]

I was wondering if I'd only read the second part (i.e. the second story that was used to make the novel).

What made me doubt that this was the book was that I'm sure the main protagonist was a girl (mid to late teens?), something that you would have thought would be apparent in the blurb, particularly if it was near the start of the novel.


But perhaps it's just that my old memory is not what it was..