Amazon Review
Set in a future of in which virtual trials are a reality, and when a "Windows era" PC can be bought for 25 US dollars, The Trigger is a hi-tech science-fiction thriller which follows a discovery by physicist Jeffrey Horton which can render weaponry harmless. The promise is an end to warfare, and to the arms industry. Vested interests are not about to allow this to happen, and Horton finds himself caught in a deadly, escalating crisis, as the world spirals towards war and expediency comes face to face with morality. Horton's breakthrough offers a last chance for peace, but once the genie has been let out of the bottle, can it ever be contained again?

On the surface this is a most unusual book for Arthur C. Clarke. There is none of the interplanetary questing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Rendezvous With Rama, and while in the past Clarke's books have been almost totally devoid of violence, here is a direct confrontation with the subject. As such The Trigger reads less like Clarke's previous fiction than a liberal answer to the blockbusting adventure novels of Tom Clancy. Likewise, the flashes of humour, the sharp dialogue and the political intrigue will be more familiar to readers of Michael Kube-McDowell's Alternities and the Trigon Disunity. However, the result of this collaboration is an epic thriller, as well as a surprising change of direction for Arthur C. Clarke, undoubtedly the most famous science fiction writer in the world. --Gary S. Dalkin

Amazon.com Review
The early 21st century ushers in a revolution in unified field theory, and free-thinking physicist Jeffrey Horton and his team are pushing the cutting edge. Sequestered on a maximum-security research campus, the scientists are testing "Baby," a device they hope will create "a laser for gravity," a tractor beam. But during an early run, every gun in the area (and even a secret stash of fireworks) simultaneously explodes. Follow-up tests soon prove their device was responsible--that it can in fact neutralize every conventional gun, bomb, and explosive--and that's when Baby becomes the "Trigger."

This speculative novel by sci-fi legend Arthur C. Clarke and genre workman Michael Kube-McDowell follows the vast sea changes such an invention would bring, reading as part thriller, part social tract. Horton and his Trigger follow a course not unlike that of Einstein and the A-bomb, but ratcheted up by an order of magnitude--idealistic scientists, overwhelmed politicians, rabid lobbyists, and entrenched generals must deal with the device's deployment and consequences, both political and social, in a gun-rich, gun-dependent culture. A well-researched, plausible plot line keeps The Trigger not just readable but downright engrossing, despite its sometimes distracting lack of subtlety. All in all, a worthwhile, entertaining meditation on how technological progress always proves as unpredictable as it is inevitable. --Paul Hughes --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
One of the grand old men of SF has teamed up with Kube-McDowell (Tyrant's Test, etc.) to imagine a near-future in which all traditional weapons that use gunpowder are rendered obsolete. Out of the blue, young physicist Jeffrey Horton has been chosen to join Nobelist Karl Brohier at a laboratory named Terabyte. While Horton pursues the "stimulated emission of gravitons," a number of detonations rock the lab one day. Is this yet another terrorist attack in an America racked by violence? But it's gun clips and fireworks that exploded when Horton activated his experimental machine. After some experimentation, the lab team realizes that the device, shortly named the Trigger, causes virtually every traditional explosive within range to self-destruct. What follows is a detailed exploration of the effects of the Trigger on domestic America. Should it be made public? Who should be told first: the army, the president, the international community? To prevent being silenced by those whose power may be threatened, Brohier and Horton contact Grover Wilman, an iconoclastic U.S. senator with a strong antigun record. Wilman in turn leads them to President Mark Breland, and the full complexity of negotiating among the many factions invested in guns begins. Clarke and Kube-McDowell work through the pro and con arguments over the possession of guns and other gunpowder-based weapons, with care and research evident in every debate as they skillfully assess the tricky territory between individualism and collective trust. The authors are savvy enough never to choose easy answers, and though this political SF thriller occasionally slows down to depict detailed governmental negotiations and private deliberations, the unpredictable effects of the Trigger lend the familiar issue of gun control new urgency and excitement.