Dark Matter

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R98D65W6VLWH4?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

“Counterpart” meets “All the Myriad Ways” meets “Nine Princes in Amber.”

Here there be spoilers.

I was put onto this by Hannah Greendale's “bookworm” Youtube channel. She liked it and refused to provide a synopsis on the grounds that it would spoil the book.

As a lifelong science fiction reader, I didn't find it all that surprising. I found myself anticipating the plot developments well in advance.

On the other hand, I found this a super-fun read. It recycled concepts that I'd seen developed everywhere in lively ways. It had fun with the ideas, and if it hooks people on science fiction, then more power to it.

Jason Dessen is having a good life. He is not a star but he has a satisfying life, which a loving wife and son. This changes when he is kidnapped by a mysterious man who knows his name and is interested in details about his wife, and shanghaied to a research lab where people seem to know him and his groundbreaking research, but he doesn't know any of them.

In the first few pages, I was thinking “time travel?” When the character started asking questions, I thought “parallel universes.”

Voila! I was right.

The premise of the book is, of course, that every decision made in one world means that a world is created where the opposite decision was made. In “All the Myriad Ways,” Larry Niven explored what this idea might mean to people who have the knowledge that a poker hand won in this world meant a poker hand lost in another. Can you take satisfaction in knowing that you just happened to be the inevitable “lucky” one that had to win in an infinity of universes.

Dessen learns about the way of travel through parallel worlds which involves exercising one's will and desire, not unlike Corwin in “Nine Princes in Amber.” His mission is to get back to his wife, Daniella. He is initially helped by Amanda, who we think might develop into a love interest but doesn't...in the time line of our focal character.

H. Beam Piper, I think, invented the idea of “spreading the band” as alternate worlds are created by decision made in the original time line, which spread the original time line into multiple and infinite time lines. At the same time, there are soon an infinity of travelers looking to return to their time line. Piper suggested this would not be a problem since an infinite number of time lines leave a lot of room for even an infinite number of returning visitors.

But in an infinite number of possibilities, there are bound to be some duplication.

Crouch does a great job of considering the implications of this last idea.

The strength of a science fiction story is how well does it permit philosophical questions. The question in Crouch is what makes for individuality. By the end of the book, we are rooting for the “original” Jason against his competition, but is that really the “original”? We could have followed any of the other Jasons on their journey and they would have been every bit the original from our perspective.

It makes for some mind-bending stuff.

This is not a perfect book. The character is likable, but fairly two-dimensional. There are loose ends - what happens to Amanda? - and thought problems - are there hundreds of Schroedinger boxes in Chicago?

I was originally going to give this four stars, but this book accomplishes what it set out to accomplish: it is a fun, “big think” classic science fiction story, sort of a throw-back in this day and age.

PSB