About My Books
Can a physicist actually write fiction? Is that allowed? Well . . . maybe.
We physicists are a talented bunch. Many of us can pass for normal people. Take us out of our back rooms, shampoo our hair, put a nice suit on us, and we'll look like . . . a bunch of wet-haired geeks in suits. A few of us can even type without getting Cheezits stuck in the keyboard.
I've been terribly lucky. I've now published several novels and have won a fistful of writing awards. So people have stopped calling me the physicist novelist. Now I'm the novelist physicist. This is progress. I even have a few friends who admit to knowing me, despite the evident damage to their reputations.
I write character-oriented thrillers. Sometimes my books have a science backdrop. Sometimes they don't. Generally, some sort of Deep Theme emerges in my novels. I don't know why this happens. I write to tell the best story I can. If it turns out to Mean Something, that's all cool, but my main goal is to give you a good time. I'd also like to become obscenely wealthy. I hope to do that by giving trillions of you a good time. This means each of you need to reproduce several million times. Please get started.
If you'd like to hear from me regularly . . . you must be crazy. If you're crazy, please join my free email newsletter, Randy Ingermanson's Book News. I send this out with news about my current writing projects, so it's not real high-maintenance for you.
Here is a list of my books. All of these are fiction except the Bible code book.
City of God Series (time-travel novels set in ancient Jerusalem)
- Transgression (2000) A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul. A Christy award winner.
- Premonition (2003) Two time-travelers in first-century Jerusalem try to prevent the execution of James, the brother of Jesus.
- Retribution (2004) Two time-travelers in first-century Jerusalem find themselves at odds with each other in dealing with the coming destruction of the City of God by Rome. A Christy award finalist.
Oxygen Series (science fiction novels set on Mars)
- Oxygen (2001) An explosion on the way to Mars leaves four astronauts with only enough oxygen for one to survive. A Christy award winner.
- The Fifth Man (2002) Four astronauts discover life on Mars and are stalked by an intelligent entity. A Christy award finalist.
Standalone novels
- Double Vision (2004) A high-tech startup company in San Diego has a new technology worth billions -- if they can live long enough to bring it to market.
Non-fiction
- Who Wrote The Bible Code? This was my first book and my only non-fiction title. I analyzed the alleged Bible code and found no measurable evidence of encoded information.
Several of my novels are about time-travel. A number of hot-shot physicists have thought hard about the possibility of traveling through time. Click here to learn more about the physics of time-travel.
My novel Premonition deals with James the brother of Jesus. There's a bone-box in Jerusalem with the extraordinary inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Some scholars believe this bone-box belonged to the real James. Click here to learn more about this controversy.
Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ stirred a lot of passions, back in the day. Is the movie really anti-semitic? Or is it great art? Is it possible that it's both? Or neither? Since a number of my novels deal with friction between Jews and Christians, I've thought hard about these questions. Click here to read my thoughts on this controversy.
