Solution

The year is 1977, and a particle physicist unwittingly puts together a substance that dissolves everything that comes into contact with it. He has created a universal solvent, and confronts an unfortunate problem: what container can you put it in? City Hall wants to try. Good luck with that. The scientist, along with his daughter, a cat named Schrödinger, and a reporter who assigns himself to the story, try to find any way at all to save the world.

While recovering from a heartbreak of his own design, reporter Joe Rasley takes on the most interesting story he's seen in a long time - even though he seems to be the only journalist on the scene who seems to find the end of the world remotely newsworthy. The year is 1977, and a particle physicist has unwittingly put together a substance that dissolves everything that comes into contact with it. He has created a universal solvent, and now confronts an unfortunate problem: what container can you put it in? Joe finds himself getting a crash course in particle physics as he joins the eccentric Dr. Kohlman, the doctor's headstrong physicist daughter Diana, and a cat named Schrödinger, as they try to find any way at all to save the world. And it doesn't hurt to find himself falling in love along the way. Solution is a clever, yet scientifically rigorous novel that explores the intersection of journalism, science and government. Set in the gritty cityscape of 1970s New York, its themes are just as relevent to the world we live in now.

Jim Stratton has been fascinated by the oddness of our world in space all his life. Among his estimated 8,000 news interviews over his years as a reporter in the 1970's were three Presidents of the United States, two Beatles, three heads of state, and eight newsmakers who have been assassinated. However, he never dated a fashion model, nor a physicist. He's written 350+ newspaper columns, hitchhiked an estimated 17,000 miles, spent 18 years as a reform Democratic District Leader in Manhattan, made several short art films, and opened four iconic bars (Grassroots and Puffy's in Manhattan, Bar Bayeux in Brooklyn, and The Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans). He is also an accomplished palindromist. Jim was one of the very early loft-tenants in both SoHo (1968) and Tribeca (1974). His first published book, Pioneering in the Urban Wilderness, was an account of the sweat-equity conversions of commercial buildings by artists in a dozen cities across the U.S. If these experiences don't qualify him to recognize oddness, nothing does. Jim has four adult children, three grandchildren, and now lives with his wife of forty years (and two schnauzers) in an idyllic small town in Upstate New York.