By BLAKE CROUCH (Crown; 2016)
Quantum mechanics has proven itself a difficult literary proposition. Such conceptions can be downright mind-boggling, as proven by noggin’ scratchers like by CHRONOLYSIS Michel Jeury and EMPTY SPACE by M. John Harrison. It’s appropriate, then, that 2016’s DARK MATTER by Blake Crouch (incidentally not the first quantum-minded novel with that title) has become the defining work of quantum-themed fiction, as despite some extremely weighty conceptions it’s an easy and enjoyable read.
The book begins with the college physics professor Jason Dessen living in Chicago with his wife Daniela and son Charlie. All is well according to Jason’s present tense narration, but that’s only because “I’m unaware that tonight is the end of all of this. The end of everything I know, everything I love.” That end occurs when Jason nearly gets hit by a car upon exiting a Whole Foods. From there he’s abducted by a masked man who seems to know a great deal about his life and history, and forces him at gunpoint into an abandoned warehouse, where the abductor injects himself with a clear fluid and Jason wakes up to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by hazmat suit wearing strangers who congratulate and welcome him back.
TRAILER for 2024 TV Series based on Crouch’s Book (Trailer)
In this reality Jason finds that Daniela is married to someone else and Charlie doesn’t exist. Daniela has become a famous artist, while Jason himself has foregone the college professor route to become a famous physicist. Yet we also get chapters set in the initial reality, in which Jason heads back home after the near-accident bearing zero knowledge of the abduction or reawakening, and finds everything hunky-dory with Daniela and Charlie.
It’s made clear on multiple occasions that time travel is not a factor in this novel, which occurs on a linear timeline befitting the present tense prose. Yet it reads much like the time travel classics THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF by David Gerrold and REPLAY by Ken Grimwood, with Jason confronted with multiple versions of himself (identified as “JASON2,” “JASON4,” JASON8,” etc.) that he has to evade or outwit. This is to say that he’s thrust into the multiverse (a term that wasn’t as nearly as widespread in 2016 as it is now), where he and a female colleague are confronted with infinite variants of himself and his life. Being a physicist, Jason helpfully explains to her (and us) the scientific rationale for what’s occurring.
Blake Crouch favors single sentence, and often single word, paragraphs, and while he’s not as adept at this as (for instance) Jack Ketchum, the writing never feels arch or affected. Further helping things along is the fact that Jason is a thoroughly good guy, with his bad qualities relegated to his alternate reality doubles. This ensures that the reader, for better or worse, is never challenged overmuch, with the Jason-Daniela love story, and Jason’s attempts at finding his way back to the reality he initially left, being the novel’s main concerns. If you want a real workout in the quantum realm I’d recommend tracking down the aforementioned Michael Jeury or M. John Harrison books, which I promise will give your brain a thorough, and permanent, airing out.