Most astrophysicists believe that the force holding stars and galaxies together – the thing that makes our whole universe work – comes from a theoretical substance we can't measure or observe directly. Something they call dark matter. And this dark matter makes up most of the known universe.You know the expression, “Great books don't make good movies”? While I happen to believe that that is true, it's not necessarily true that the obverse is correct: it's not like great movies can only come from mediocre books. Dark Matter almost reads like a screenplay – all action with very little interior reflection – and while that makes this a fun and energetic read, it doesn't make this a great book; it doesn't make this literature. But neither is it mediocre: if you feel like switching off your brain and passively watching a twisty plot unspool – as one does when watching a sci-fi/thriller of a movie – this is solid entertainment. Beware of mild spoilers beyond: it's best to go into this book cold.
I can’t help thinking that we’re more than the sum total of our choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity.Jason Dessen is a physics professor at a small Chicago university – and although he had been one of the brightest emerging minds of his generation, he made the choice to prioritise his family over his career (which he doesn't exactly regret, but he can't help but wonder “what if” when former colleagues are winning major prizes in the field). While walking home one evening, Jason is kidnapped at gunpoint, stripped naked and drugged, and when he wakes up, he's in a strange laboratory where everyone seems to know him but the details of his life aren't right: where's his wife and son? What is this groundbreaking research that everyone thinks he has accomplished? Is he hallucinating now or are his memories of his former life the fantasy? With a dodgy-sounding scientific explanation, author Blake Crouch starts a “ticking clock” device – Jason only has so many chances to set things straight – and while the scenes that follow are perfectly cinematic, they're not exactly mind-bendingly original or philosophically deep: this book has the narrative heft of a Twilight Zone episode (but as I always enjoyed the Twilight Zone, this isn't exactly meant as an insult).
If there are infinite worlds, how do I find the one that is uniquely, specifically mine?I'll need to get more spoilery specific to talk about what didn't work for me, so this is my more urgent warning to avoid what follows if you don't want to know what happens. I'll accept that the metal cube plus vaguely described psychoactive compound will open the gateway to the multiverse, and since he had been exploring with a hundred ampoules over fourteen months, it's unsurprising that Jason2 discovered at least one universe in which he had found domestic happiness: out of infinite possibilities, there are likely a near infinite number in which Jason and Daniela had gotten married. But if I followed correctly, Jason2 drugged Jason and then brought him to his own universe – which he found on the first try – shoved him out the door of the cube, and then Jason2 returned to Jason's specific universe – again, on the first try, despite Jason's later difficulty narrowing in on the exact reality with which only he was intimately knowledgeable. I understand that at every step there would have been failed attempts that branched off into other multiverses – that we are following the one reality in which everything happened just this way – but something about this constant implausibility factor undermined the scientific reality of Crouch's plot for me. I didn't like the way that Daniela didn't quite realise that she wasn't living with the same man for a month: in all that time, they never once referenced something that had happened between them in the past fifteen years? (I actually think there was a real opportunity lost for a mirrored scene of Daniela cooking that heirloom stew and Jason2 having no idea what she means when she asks him to prepare the “toppings”.) I found it more funny than thrilling when all the multi-Jasons start converging at the end of the book, and while I can imagine the big cinematic climax at the cabin with all the dead Jasons piling up, that isn't actually the type of movie I tend to watch. And the open-ended ending left me unsatisfied.
I don't understand the apparent concensus that Dark Matter is breathtakingly original – on the back cover Lee Child enthuses, “I think Blake Crouch just invented something new” – just how long ago did Robert Frost write The Road Not Taken? How long has it been since Jimmy Stewart was desperately fighting to get back into his reality in It's a Wonderful Life? Bottom line: This was a fine and swift read, and as Couch is already working on the screenplay adaptation, I have no doubt it could make a great movie.
