Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
On his way back from buying a carton of ice cream for his wife and son, Jason Desson is kidnapped at gunpoint, drugged and forced into a futuristic looking cube sitting in the middle of an abandoned warehouse. He wakes up on a floor somewhere else where lots of people are welcoming him back after being gone for over a year. Jason is really confused, but he doesn’t quite let anyone know because one thing is giving him pause. That cube was really similar to a teeny-tiny prototype he drew up in his mind back in his graduate school days to allow an object to simultaneously exist in different states (think Schrodinger's Cat a zillion-fold) and if that is what it was then what in the heck just happened?!
Yep, this is the book I chose to take with me as a beach read. And it was perfect...for me. The quantum physics is really well explained, so don’t worry about the book being overly technical. It does get really really REALLY weird.
Basically one version of Jason made it possible to travel to alternate worlds. All those huge life choices you made that altered the course of your life, as well as all the tiny decisions that nudged things a bit, as well as the things that happened on a huge scale, like say an asteroid strike, have all happened in one of these universes. But what would happen if one you decided to slip into the life of another you? How could You1 find his way back to the world where You2 took over your life? And what happens when you keep opening doors to other worlds? Would that mean more of you would pop into or out of existence?
I really liked this book, if you couldn’t tell, because it made me think and freak out alongside the main character. Yes, it’s a book about alternate worlds, but at the core it’s about what is most important in life and what you would do to get it back.
Written by the strange mind who brought you the books the television show Wayward Pines is based on, I recommend it for those who miss Michael Crichton or Twin Peaks, or are looking for something sciencey to read after loving The Martian.
