Although largely autobiographical, String's main subject is just that:- string and it goes like this:~ 

The author, Steve Acworth, spends most of his life, from the age of 8, around string, starting with crudely fashioned orange-box "guitars", continuing through the rock'n'roll years of the 60's playing and singing in amateur and semi-pro bands, leading on through a career in graphics, a period of "dropped-out (and failed) would-be popstardom" and on to become an internationally known and respected specialist electric guitar technician and maker, counting many "rock star" musicians as clients.
 
Most importantly, his life-long interest in strange and alternative physics leads him on into the logical analysis of ancient legend and myth and the connections and coincidences that abound therein with string. An obsession with the UFO phenomena leads him literally "down the garden path" to the status of "Mad Inventor" in an unceasing quest to uncover the secrets of the Holy Grail of gravity control and thus its conquest. That quest is now currently the focus of discussion around the Alternative Technology web-rings and is perhaps close to proper recognition:~
Site: http://www.sparkspin.btinternet.co.uk/index.htm has recently come to the attention of Alternative technologies folks:~ 
Example:example page

For your convenience, that entire web-site folder (modified for this CDROM) is included here and can be accessed by clicking this link ~ and this document also contains other specific links to that folder. info (BBC Radio 4 discussions).

A special kind of string is at the crux of a machine that can release almost unbounded energy from a drop of water but not only that, will provide a workable "Gravity Key". This is what particle physicists have sought after for decades. No sensible scientist would claim that we have the answers we need to crack this nut from the research yet done. The more power and energy we put in to the subject, the less it seems we know, especially in the area of Quantum Mechanics. Notwithstanding that, here is some information from the accepted view. Also, here...

Or you could read another summary at- http://www.flash.net/~csmith0/theryall.htm (Nothing to do with me). 

a lumbering stone-age cart with a very transparent halo...

World Economy:- a lumbering stone-age cart with a very transparent halo...

If this particular story ends with a failed, disproven hypothesis, then it makes fine science fiction but if the hypothesis - a finely detailed explanation in terms of engineering and Pure Physics (with string at the focus), with none of the hokum or weird spiritual nonsense normally associated with the area of UFO's and the building of the Great Pyramids) turns out, after 30 years' work to be correct, then the world becomes overnight a very different, much better place. The wheel, wing and rocket are suddenly rendered obsolete, the oil industry is decimated and world economy is plunged briefly into chaos but the once-green planet is healed.

Modest?
 
Moreover (and crucially), an army of "Superman" police is equipped with a hand-held tool that renders them virtually invincible and the day of the terrorist and dictator is at an end. The "tool" in question turns out to be the embodiment of the frequently illustrated image in ancient Egyptian engraving, typically held in the hands of Pharaohs;~ The Ankh.
"String" is the story of how all of this comes to pass...

The story begins with an 8-year old boy in a garden shed at the end of a long day in school (where he has been made to sing musical scales for hours and forced to endure what he considers to be religious clap-trap by a well-intentioned but fanatical teacher).

It has been an important day though and one that will change the shape of the rest of his life (and possibly civilization on the grand scale)...
 
The school music lessons have served to sharpen his ear but he has found it hard to take on board the flip-chart pictures of long-robed disciples, sheep and wide-eyed children at the feet of a kindly faced and bearded "saviour". He recalls the moment when focus on today's lesson has drifted and a kind of dream-state has descended upon him and a voice is speaking in his subconscious ear:~
 

"You will be the man who makes toys for the children who ride in spaceships".

In the shed, the boy has decided to make a start and begins to make his first "guitar". He takes an old kitchen drawer and nails a stick to it, with a hole at the end to take a shaved-down clothes peg for tuning. A piece of green sea-fishing twine is tied to a nail at the end of the box and wrapped around the tuning peg. A piece of wood is stood on end  to serve as a "bridge" and he starts to mark out the notes of a major scale along the stick, working by ear. The first tune he plays is "Oh Shenandoah".
 
There is a mighty "BANG" and the bridge falls over. He stands it up again and re-tensions the string. "Oh Shenandoah" now sounds completely wrong and he realises that it isn't how long the stick is; rather, it is how long the string is...

View synopsis in one big hit:-