Books
Nonfiction
Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction
Dey Street Books / HarperCollins (2018)
Hugo and Locus Award Finalist
An Economist Best Book of the Year
“Amazing and engrossing…Insightful, entertaining, and compulsively readable.”
—George R.R. Martin
Astounding is the landmark account of the extraordinary partnership between four controversial writers—John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard—who set off a revolution in science fiction and forever changed our world.
This remarkable cultural narrative centers on the figure of John W. Campbell, Jr., whom Asimov called “the most powerful force in science fiction ever.” Campbell, who has never been the subject of a biography until now, was both a visionary author—he wrote the story that was later filmed as The Thing—and the editor of the groundbreaking magazine best known as Astounding Science Fiction, in which he discovered countless legendary writers and published classic works ranging from the I, Robot series to Dune. Over a period of more than thirty years, from the rise of the pulps to the debut of Star Trek, he dominated the genre, and his three closest collaborators reached unimaginable heights. Asimov became the most prolific author in American history; Heinlein emerged as the leading science fiction writer of his generation with the novels Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land; and Hubbard achieved lasting fame—and infamy—as the founder of the Church of Scientology.
Drawing on unexplored archives, thousands of unpublished letters, and dozens of interviews, Astounding offers a riveting portrait of this circle of authors, their work, and their tumultuous private lives. With unprecedented scope, drama, and detail, it describes how fan culture was born in the depths of the Great Depression; follows these four friends and rivals through World War II and the dawn of the atomic era; and honors such women as Doña Campbell and Leslyn Heinlein, whose pivotal roles in the history of the genre have gone largely unacknowledged. For the first time, it reveals the startling extent of Campbell’s influence on the ideas that evolved into Scientology, which prompted Asimov to observe: “I knew Campbell and I knew Hubbard, and no movement can have two Messiahs.” It looks unsparingly at the tragic final act that estranged the others from Campbell, bringing the golden age of science fiction to a close, and it illuminates how their complicated legacy continues to shape the imaginations of millions and our vision of the future itself.
Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
Dey Street Books / HarperCollins (2022)
One of Esquire’s Fifty Best Biographies of All Time
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
An Economist Best Book of the Year
From Alec Nevala-Lee, author of the Hugo and Locus Awards finalist Astounding, comes a revelatory biography of the visionary designer who defined the rules of startup culture and shaped America’s idea of the future.
During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer, inventor, and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, Fuller enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the establishment, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci. Using a design strategy based on geometry, he became convinced that it was possible to provide for all humanity through the efficient use of planetary resources, which he embodied in the image of Spaceship Earth. From Epcot Center to the molecule named in his honor as the buckyball, Fuller’s legacy endures to this day, and his belief in the transformative potential of technology profoundly influenced the founders of Silicon Valley.
Inventor of the Future is the first authoritative biography to cover all aspects of Buckminster Fuller’s career, which extended from World War I through the digital revolution. Drawing upon thousands of unpublished documents and dozens of interviews, it reconstructs the true origins of his most famous inventions, including the Dymaxion Car and the Wichita House; his fraught relationships with his students and collaborators; his interactions with Frank Lloyd Wright, Isamu Noguchi, Clare Boothe Luce, John Cage, Steve Jobs, and many others; and his tumultuous private life, in which his determination to succeed on his own terms came at an immense personal cost. In an era of accelerating change, Fuller’s story remains enormously relevant, and his lessons for designers, activists, and innovators are as powerful and essential as ever.
Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey From Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs
W. W. Norton (2025)
“A wonderful book, a chance for readers to get to know one of the great physicists of the twentieth century…Outstanding!"
―Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb
From the acclaimed biographer of Buckminster Fuller, a riveting biography of the Nobel Prize–winning physicist who became the greatest scientific detective of the twentieth century.
To his admirers, Luis W. Alvarez was the most accomplished, inventive, and versatile experimental physicist of his generation. During World War II, he achieved major breakthroughs in radar, played a key role in the Manhattan Project, and served as the lead scientific observer at the bombing of Hiroshima. In the decades that followed, he revolutionized particle physics with the hydrogen bubble chamber, developed an innovative X-ray method to search for hidden chambers in the Pyramid of Chephren, and shot melons at a rifle range to test his controversial theory about the Kennedy assassination. At the very end of his life, he collaborated with his son to demonstrate that an asteroid impact was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, igniting a furious debate that raged for years after his death.
Alvarez was also a combative and relentlessly ambitious figure―widely feared by his students and associates―who testified as a government witness at the security hearing that destroyed the public career of his friend and colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer. In the first comprehensive biography of Alvarez, Alec Nevala-Lee vividly recounts one of the most compelling untold stories in modern science, a narrative overflowing with ideas, lessons, and anecdotes that will fascinate anyone with an interest in how genius and creativity collide with the problems of an increasingly challenging world.
Novels
The Icon Thief
Penguin Books / New American Library, 2012
“Nevala-Lee’s cerebral, exciting debut proves there’s plenty of life left in the Da Vinci Code–style thriller as long as fresh venues and original characters enhance the familiar plot elements and genre tropes…Nevala-Lee leaves a few loose ends to be resolved in what is sure to be the eagerly awaited sequel.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A controversial masterpiece resurfaces in Budapest. A headless ballerina is found beneath the boardwalk at Brighton Beach. And New York’s Russian mafia is about to collide with the equally ruthless art world…
Maddy Blume, an ambitious young art buyer for a Manhattan hedge fund, is desperate to track down a priceless painting by Marcel Duchamp, the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
The discovery of a woman’s decapitated body thrusts criminal investigator Alan Powell into a search for the same painting, a study for Duchamp’s Étant Donnés, with its enigmatic image of a headless nude.
And a Russian thief and assassin known as the Scythian must steal the painting first to save his reputation—and his life.
The murderous race is on. And in the lead is an insidious secret society intent on reclaiming the painting for reasons of its own—and by any means necessary…
City of Exiles
Penguin Books / New American Library (2012)
“Nevala-Lee’s stylish follow-up to his debut, The Icon Thief, introduces Mormon FBI agent Rachel Wolfe, who’s come to London to work with the British police…à la Clarice Starling…Readers will look forward to seeing more of the intrepid Rachel in the trilogy’s third volume.”
—Publishers Weekly
In the lightning-paced sequel to The Icon Thief, Europe’s turbulent past and terrifying future are set to collide in the streets and prisons of London—and beyond.
Rachel Wolfe, a gifted Mormon FBI agent assigned to a major investigation overseas, discovers that a notorious gun runner has been murdered at his home in London, his body set on fire. When a second victim is found under identical circumstances, the ensuing chase plunges Wolfe and her colleagues into a breathless race across Europe, a secret war between two ruthless intelligence factions, and a hunt for a remorseless killer with a deadly appointment in Helsinki.
At the heart of the mystery lies one of the strangest unsolved incidents in the history of Russia—the unexplained death of nine mountaineers in the Dyatlov Pass five decades before. And at the center of it all stands a figure from Wolfe’s own past, Ilya Severin, the Russian thief and former assassin known in another life as the Scythian…
Eternal Empire
Penguin Books / New American Library (2013)
“In Eternal Empire, lost worlds and mysterious legends collide with modern-day resonance. Alec Nevala-Lee dishes up another sparkling and complex kaleidoscope of Russian lore, from Scythians and saints to serpents and spies, as two resourceful heroines race to decipher the buried secret.”
—Katherine Neville, New York Times bestselling author of The Eight
An electrifying mystery that will draw one woman into a global conspiracy—and into the sights of one of the most dangerous men in the world…
Maddy Blume is a survivor. Years ago, while working as an art analyst in New York, she was changed forever by an encounter with Ilya Severin, the thief and former assassin once known as the Scythian. Now, in London, she is presented with an unusual proposition: to go undercover as an art consultant to a Russian oil billionaire suspected of channeling profits to military intelligence.
As Maddy grows closer to her new boss, however, she discovers that his ambitions extend far beyond natural resources. He is out to shape the future of Russia on a massive scale, using the secret of the mythical empire of Shambhala, in a quest that will lead Maddy on a violent odyssey across Europe and to the far edge of the Black Sea.
Yet her involvement has not gone unnoticed. Not by the secret police. Not by her employer’s rivals. And least of all by the Scythian himself…