This was OK for me, but no more. There are two SFnal gimmicks needed to drive the plot and that was enough to make the result seem contrived to me. First, Earth has apparently been involved in international warfare so long that a special set of troops has been developed to endure and even enjoy being violently killed and reborn. Next, there is a wormhole technology but it turns out using it causes stars to go nova all over the place. So now our hero is selected to be sent through a really tiny (1.934 cm) wormhole to a colony in order to convince them to stop using the technology. Somehow they have a way to squeeze him through that hole, fatally hence why they pick him, but reconstructibly. I couldn't figure out how that worked. Then eventually his talents are needed again for the big climax. Oh, and there's a nascent love interest who goes through the same process but she remained a cypher for me for the entire book. So much detail is spent on the physics at several points that I assume some of it must make sense, but it bogs down the narrative.

OK, and recommended if space opera mixed with a bit of angst is your thing. ( )

The stars go nova. And it's our fault.

A soldier and a telepathic communicator are sent to warn a colony on another planet. All they have to do is squeeze through a 1.9 cm hole. Seems easy compared to dealing with all the military personnel on both sides.

The technological advances allow long distance matter transfer, nullbombs, resurrection of the dead and telepathic transmission of pain. ( )

An expansion from a short story (the first chapter), Dave Langford carries his love of Physics into a twisty story of human trust and war. It reads a little like a humorous version of Algis Budrys's Rogue Moon - a man (and a woman in this case) is forced into enduring terrible things in service of the state. Sent into an impossible (though Physically almost plausible) situation how will heroes react? Great stuff. ( )

Dave Langford's only hard-sf novel to date is a tour de force of theoretical physics with the nastiest matter transmitter you will ever come across.

Matter transmitters in this universe have been proved possible; but not practicable. Their use affects nearby suns, making them go nova unless the MT gate is restricted in size - to 1.9 centimetres. Not very useful; but when a lost human colony is detected using MT technology, something has to be done.

The military of the time have (by and large) perfected the technology of regenerating damaged and destroyed bodies and alleviating many of the simpler forms of death. A desperate plan is hatched to a) send a sophisticated robot through a 'mini-gate' to build first a spaceship and then two regeneration tanks, then b) send a soldier and a psychic communications specialist through the gate to undertake a mission to persuade whoever is using MT at the other end to stop. And there is, of course, a Plan B...

The regeneration tanks are necessary because the only way to get a human being through a 1.9 centimetre aperture is to reduce them to a spinal column and as much cerebral cortex as can be spared...

The reality of getting to the colony and then making contact with the colonists takes up about half the book; the other half tells what happens then, the political manouevering, and the revelation of Earth's final solution. Strange to relate, it has a diameter of about 1.9 centimetres...

The UK Arrow paperback has some unintentionally hilarious cover art, showing a spacesuited figure apparently doing ballet exercises with a giant glowing Malteser. Apparently, the artist had no idea how to show a mini black hole.... ( )