SO NOW I’M READING GREG BENFORD’S The Berlin Project, an alternative-history take on the Manhattan Project. It’s pretty interesting: Almost all of the characters are real historical individuals, many (like Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, etc.) personally known to Benford in his youth. The difference between this and our real history is that they went all-in on centrifuges from the start, producing a bomb a year earlier. I have to say, I’d rather live in the resulting post-war alternate timeline, I think.