Science fiction is not my thing. I was never interested in science in school, I was never curious about how the technology I use works, the mechanics behind how the world works never fascinated me, and there are too many opposing theories to unanswered questions within the realm of science for a concrete-answers knowledge seeker like myself. However, I kept seeing Dark Matter by Blake Crouch pop up all over Instagram, bookstores, and podcasts, so I decided that it might be worth picking up. With little convincing on my behalf, my book club decided to choose it as our November book-of-the-month. None of us knew much about it, but we were all curious.
After reading the book sleeve I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Blake Crouch is the same author as the Wayward Pines trilogy. While I never read those books (hence why I didn't recognize Crouch's name), I have thoroughly enjoyed M. Night Shyamalan's television adaption of Crouch's story. The opening chapter of Dark Matter was highly reminiscent of the first episodes of both seasons of Wayward Pines. Each of the characters in the show, as well as the main character in this novel, is prompted to ask, "Where am I?" "How did I get here?" and "What happened to my real life as I remember it?" This similar setup made me hesitant about Dark Matter in the first few chapters, as I figured this story would venture down the same story line as Wayward Pines, but boy was I wrong...
Dark Matter follows the story of Jason Dessen, a college physics professor, who is content in his life with his wife and one son, but consistently questions whether having given up his dreams of scientific research, or his wife's dreams of becoming a world-renowned artist, were the most prudent decisions to make in their early 20s. After a night of reflection on what-ifs, Jason finds himself being stalked, mugged, and left unconscious by a masked man. When Jason wakes up, the world as he has known it for the past 15 years is completely gone, replaced by an alternative life where his scientific research has received awards for unlocking the secrets to superposition and, subsequently, of the multiverse. Lost, confused, and desperate to get home to his wife and son, Jason finds himself on a spatial adventure that he only remembers dreaming to be possible in another lifetime.
Crouch's story about Jason's research involves an in-depth understanding of quantum physics - an area of study that is daunting and dense to say the least. However, Crouch presents the theories and logistics in a way that allows the reader to understand the basics of the quantum mechanics involved in the plot without running on too-long tangents of scientific theory (which is often what turns me off to most sci-fi stories). Even with this dense and sometimes DARK subject MATTER (see what I did there?...), the story itself is extremely fast-paced. The writing is not simplistic, but the style is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road where information is presented in short fragments of sentences and small paragraphs. There are no lengthy descriptions, but rather quick bits of insight that keep the reader moving through the action quickly. The suspense of the story kept me reading late into the night and continuously guessing. Every time I thought I could see where the story was headed, a new turn in events took the story in a direction that I could never have predicted. By the time I reached the final page, I found myself wondering how I had possibly covered almost 350 pages worth of material in what felt like reading a short story.
While suspenseful thrillers sometimes question the human psyche, I have never had so deep a questions of my own existential being as with this story. Jason's journey poses questions that I found myself pondering about points in my own life. The exploration into what our life decisions lead us to become along with the regrets we choose to live with in life all left me contemplating my own past, present, and future. I also found myself wondering what truly comprises the innermost makeup of a singular human being; what is the soul and what factors cohesively contribute to making me, me? As well, the concepts presented into how the multiverse diverges and intersects left me introspective as to the possibilities of what I perceive around me as the "real" world and what could possibly be happening that the evolution of the human brain has not yet been capable of comprehending.
After a venture down the rabbit hole of YouTube videos and Wikipedia pages about Schrodinger's cat, I found myself hypothesizing how a multifaceted being that parallels along the same time continuum in alternative multiverses could still possess the same inner makeup. Jason's own insight into his multiverse self made me wonder if these paradoxical alternate beings (the other versions of our self) can be channeled together into a cohesive convergence through karmic and yogic studies - perhaps our moments of quiet where we come into ourselves allows us to connect with all possible branches of our other selves across the multiverse, leaving us at peace because we are, in that moment, everything we could ever have become with no questions of what if. Call me conspiratorial, but I think this would make for an interesting thesis. Here's my call to action for the world: Quantum and spiritual researchers, unite and bring this theory into full fruition!
Because I know that my former call to action will never be fulfilled, here's a secondary call to all readers: Do yourself a favor and pick up this title, and when you find yourself when theories that seems just as insane as mine, email me and share so that we discover the probable impossibilities of the worlds together.
