Dana Reyes★ Contributor · Lv 4
todayA physics thriller that actually moved me. It's really about the life you chose versus the ones you didn't.
Science fiction
Dark Matter
by Blake Crouch
4.7· 1,332 ratings
Published 2016360 pagesEnglishMind-bending · Propulsive
We're more than the sum of our experiences.
Why read it
Walking home one night, a physics professor is abducted at gunpoint by a masked stranger, drugged, and wakes to a world where he is celebrated as a genius, his wife is not his wife, and the son he adores was never born.
The premise
Jason Dessen loves his ordinary life, until he is thrown into a version of it he never chose. The kidnapper turns out to be a road not taken, and the science behind the abduction, a box that opens onto the branching worlds of the multiverse, forces Jason into a desperate race across countless versions of his own reality to find his way back to the family that is truly his.
The story behind it
Blake Crouch, also known for the Wayward Pines trilogy, published Dark Matter in 2016. It became a New York Times bestseller, was translated into dozens of languages, and was adapted by Crouch himself into an Apple TV+ series, with the book widely praised for making cutting-edge physics feel breathless.
What awaits inside
- 01
The road not taken
What awaits is a thriller literalizing every choice you second-guessed, with an antagonist who is the man you might have been.
- 02
The box of worlds
A quantum corridor lets Jason step between realities, and the rules of navigating it become a ticking-clock puzzle.
- 03
What makes a self
As identical Jasons multiply, the story asks what, if anything, makes any of them the real one.
- 04
Love as the anchor
The pull back toward one specific wife and son is the compass that keeps the physics from becoming abstract.
From the book
The abduction on the Chicago street, when the masked man forces Jason to drive at gunpoint to an abandoned power plant.
The escalating confrontation among multiple versions of Jason, all converging on the same house and the same woman.
4.7
1,332 ratings
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