I am an aspiring science-fiction writer. Most good sci-fi concepts begin with the sentence "You can't do that… But what if you could?" I remember when the Fleischmann-Pons experiment was in the news in 1989. And then shortly thereafter all the news articles debunking it as a mistake and/or fraud. I didn't follow the topic after that but recently decided I might try to write a story about an inventor who really did perfect D+D room-temperature fusion. I know about the movies and TV shows that reference cold fusion, but I wanted to try creating a story of my own. In researching the story, I came across the YouTube video of the original F-P press conference. That led me to the books by Steven Krivit "Fusion Fiasco" and "Hacking the Atom". I just finished reading both of them and I'm working on reading volume 3 "Lost History" which covers the early transmutation experiments from the 1920s. I had no idea that anyone was still pursuing these topics after the original experiment was so publicly rejected.
It got me curious what has happened since 2016 when Krivit published his books? Is there somewhere in this forum or some other website that would give me a good overview of the current state of the art?
Is there still a feud between those that insist that D+D workbench fusion is possible versus those who think it's electroweak interactions creating neutrons based on the Widom-Larsen theory?
Krivit was kind enough to reply to an inquiry and as I suspected from his website he is no longer interested in LENR and is focusing all of his attention on debunking the misrepresentations about the ITER hot fusion reactor.
This next question will probably open a can of worms What is the prevailing thought about Krivit and his books? His narrative seems self-consistent and he has copious footnotes and reference material on his website but on the other hand, it doesn't take much of a detective to figure out that he is in all likelihood self-publishing everything. If you do a Google search for "Pacific Oaks Press" they don't have a website. That doesn't mean he's wrong. But his story would be a tiny bit more credible if he was published by a "real" publisher. If I don't get much more success writing sci-fi, I may be self-publishing myself so I can't fault him for that. Hey, it worked for Andy Weir author of "The Martian". Maybe I'll get lucky. Anyway, is Krivit's narrative generally accepted in the community?
I am neither a physicist nor a chemist. I had a year of basic college physics while pursuing my computer science degree a long time ago (I'm currently 66) so I'm not an expert on any of this but I sure am fascinated by it.
Anywhere you can direct me to more information dumbed down to a layman's point of view would be much appreciated.