The extraordinary science-fiction novel “The Empire of the Atom,” written by the well-known Canadian writer Alfred Van Vogt, tells of a world where the existence of science as a religious doctrine is perfectly ordinary.
Only scholars who have plumbed the depths of atomic knowledge and can read the messages the atom sends them can become priests of such temples. At the same time, the ruler of this empire has it very hard, because he constantly needs to follow the advice of long-suffering temple men. No one would have thought that in the clan of an influential person a mutant child would be born—one who would overturn the surrounding world as it is and whose fate is to change the course of history described on the book’s pages.