Brain 2000

As the leaning tower of Pisa topples, two Russian ballet stars crash to the floor while executing a pas de deux. At the same time, an ice skater in Minnesota whirls out of control, and a sixteen year old math genius named Michael Piper discovers that for a few seconds he can bounce a car tire as though it were a basketball. Michael, known as "Brain 2000" to his friends, is the only one not surprised by this series of events. For with the help of the computer he received for his birthday, he has developed a spinning top theory...and discovered that the earth is about to go out of orbit, due to large amounts of oil being removed from its surface near the equator. Convinced he has the solution to the problem, he sets out to see the President of the United States. How Mike gets the attention of everyone from the White House to the Kremlin, from OPEC to ABC, makes Brain 2000 a delightfully fresh, suspenseful, and heartwarming international comedy. The author, renowned for his more serious works, shows his enormous range by taking us for one of the wildest flights of fancy since Alice landed in Wonderland.

This is a fascinating story about what might happen if the earth would lose balance because of massive removal of natural resources (oil). The person who realises the problem and the way countries around the world have to assist makes for interesting speculation on what would happen if this sort of thing was a reality. It reminds me of "Wild Card" by Hawkey + Bingham, which dealt with the 'scientific' steps the government might take to unite the country during times of civil unrest. Science fiction that is very close to science fact.