What if I told you that this is a book about quasicrystals that reads like a thriller? You’d think I was nuts. Well, this is a book about the search for a quasicrystal, something thought to be impossible, that reads like a thriller. The subtitle of The Second Kind of Impossible is The Extraordinary Quest for a New Kind of Matter. Now, we’re getting to it. Matter is matter, isn’t it? New sorts of matter might be the subject of science fiction but not of real science.