Dark Matter
by Blake Crouch
“He says, “Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse? I built something that could actually eradicate regret. Let you find worlds where you made the right choice.” Daniela says, “Life doesn’t work that way. You live with your choices and learn. You don’t cheat the system.” ― Blake Crouch, Dark Matter
Jason Dessen is a happily married former research scientist. His wife, Daniela, was once an artist, but she put her dreams on the shelf to start a family with Jason. One night, after attending a celebration for his former colleague Ryan Holder, Jason is kidnapped by a masked bandit and dragged to an abandoned power facility on the South Side of Chicago. The kidnapper injects our hero with a strange substance, and Jason passes out. When he wakes up, Jason is in an advanced scientific facility. Even weirder is the fact that everyone there seems to know him. He gets freaked out and sneaks away through a window.
Since this is a plot-driven thriller I am not going to discuss any of the details. Suffice it to say that Jason's life from that point entails a journey in which he attempts to get back to where he was at the opening of the story; a journey that involves travel between parallel universes. This is accomplished with a device based on the theory that every choice we make in our lives, big or small, leads to the creation of a parallel version of ourselves—and a whole new parallel universe. His journey includes an exploration of many of these universes, but it is only when he appears to be near the end of his journey that the suspense really starts to build.
It is that suspense, and the startling opening scenes that made this a good read for me. If you like your science fiction laced with thrills and adventure (or if you like your thrillers spiced up with some science fiction) this is a good book for you. If you ever wondered what your life would be like if you made slightly different choices along the way, this book may cure you of that sort of curiosity --- or, it may engender hope within you that the multiple universes may soon be made available for your own pleasure.
2 comments:
Multiple Universes and hopping between them is one of my fave SF sub-genres. I'll check this out. Thanks for the tip.
CyberKitten,
This book will likely give you your fill of multiple universes and some of the issues that their existence raise. The protagonist has to endure a process of trial and error before he can hope for an acceptable outcome to the predicament in which he is placed at the beginning of the novel.
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