(SPOILER ALERTS in this post – do not read if you want to read this novel!)
Summer holidays mean more reading time for me, and yesterday, I couldn’t put down Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter (2016). It combines thriller and science fiction story, similar to Michael Crichton’s books. The main character is an award-winning physicist named Dr. Jason Desson who has created a technology that allows a person to enter any personal alternative universe. The idea is that we make hundreds of decisions every day, some very consequential, that define the outcome of our lives. Desson’s machine gives access to the alternate outcomes. The big decision in this story is his choice not to marry his pregnant girlfriend and instead pursue his career in science. The result is that the career-focused Jason (Jason2) violently switches places with family-focused Jason (Jason1), and the action begins there. Eventually, dozens of Jasons converge on Jason1’s universe in a battle to become the husband of his beautiful wife and father to their son.
On a broad, simple level, the story is about the choice between career and family. Dr. Desson in one universe gets married and becomes a professor at a small college. In another universe, he wins the “Pavia” prize for his quantum physics discoveries and becomes a giant in the field of physics. Most of the time, life is not that simple and more nuanced. Crouch touches on this as there are an infinite number of universes because we make so many choices in a typical day, month, year, and life. It made me think about the decisions I made an overall I am quite happy that I was able to balance an engaging career (international education) and marriage and fatherhood.
The book is set in Chicago and near the end of the book, Jason1 escapes with his wife and son to northern Wisconsin. They take refuge from the multiple Jasons chasing him in a seasonal cabin by a lake. It is probably pretty close to my house as he drove around 6-7 hours north from Chicago.
In doing a bit of research of Crouch, he is most famous for his Wayward Pines trilogy that was made into a Netflix television series. I may want to watch it as well as this book, that was developed as a television series on Apple TV. He is a prolific author and if his other books are like this one, they make for a thrilling read.
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