Dark Matter: A Novel

This book was absolutely incredible. I finished it in 2 days and could not put it down! Ready to check out more Blake Crouch

This is a intriguing science fiction thriller dealing with alternative worlds within a multiverse, leading into different versions of Dr. Jason Dessen's life.

What a mind bender of a book. Once I started it I could not put it down. I became familiar with Blake Crouch through Wayward Pines and this new book is also SF. A man named Jason Dessen is living a comfortable life with his wife and son when one night after going out for drinks with an old friend he is suddenly and completely yanked out of it. As he fights to get back to the life and family he once knew he is confronted with all of his what if's of the past. Crouch taps into a thought that I have often had, how different your life could have turned out if you had made different choices. You don't have to be a Science Fiction nerd to enjoy Dark Matter. There is something that will resonate with everyone in it. I don't want to say too much more about a book that isn't even being released for a few months yet. The fun of of a Blake Crouch book is getting on for the ride and not knowing where it is going to take you but knowing you won't be disappointed.

The background is that because of quantum uncertainty each choice we make creates a new universe. And in each new universe a different version of us lives on constantly creating new universes. Then the teller of the story becomes a physicist who as one version of himself finds a way to begin visiting those other universes. The visiting is complicated because each time he visits a new universe there is already a version of himself there. Because different choices have been made in each universe each version of the story teller has slightly different dreams, hopes and fears.
The teller isn’t actually the creator of the quantum transporter - instead the creator comes to his universe, kidnaps him sending him back to the creator’s universe.
The rest of the story is about how the story teller finds his way back to the universe and family he left and how he copes with his doubles.
While it is a stretch the author finds a way to help us suspend disbelief.

I liked the concept of multiverse and enjoyed the consequences. However, I found the pace of the story to be too slow. I expected a thriller to be fast paced.


Jason Dessen gets abducted while coming back to home and finds himself in a changed world after regaining consciousness. His home, his wife, his entire life is different than what he remembers. He struggles to understand what happened.
After realizing that this is not his world, he escapes and enters the cube (which is built by another version of Jason in another world). After many failed attempts he is able to enter his original world, but finds that many other versions of himself have also entered it. He now has to find a way to convince his wife and son and take them to safety.

Weird, lots of twists and turns. Good characters, story moves at a good pace.

Up to about 2/3 of way through the book, I had read this like a page turner. Then it became obvious Blake Crouch didn’t have a clue how people like his main character, Jason, actually think and process life. Second, the author completely failed the opportunity to expand the positive creative, just stopping a story line when it had some redeeming value, and instead jumping Jason back into his artificial hell where he acts like a self- and loved one destructive bumbling idiot. The author tells us Jason is so in love with his family he can’t live without them, doesn’t show us. And at the same time has Jason do things that are likely to hurt his family. At this point the story lost all sense of plausible reality. Here’s the issue. Jason, as a physicist MUST be a logical thinking problem solver. There are no non-logical PhD physicists as they self select out from this study. Jason as written is a completely inept problem solver with an entirely irrational mind. He’s more emotional than the worst pre-teen drama tv character. It’s so over the top, it is unbelievable of literally any intelligent human. It’s as if the author lost all creativity, and could only drive the story by mashing the same button on his keyboard and dumbing his character down below humanity. I felt repulsed by the inconsistency. I had to put the book down for a couple days, then I forced myself to read through the next 50 pages. Fortunately, the author refocuses on the story, which ends with some interesting twists. It does not redeem the glaring sludge at the 2/3 mark. Too bad. There are lots of reasons a person finds meaning in life. A rational person could have spent time in the good universes, but eventually found them hollow without their family through his exploration and introspection. And this would have given time to explore more positive creative world building. That hyper intelligent Jason would work through the problem in this fashion is believable, and would be a platform for the author’s creativity and insight into the subtlety of an intelligent mind. So, in all, this is not a bad read. The physics is compelling, and some of that storytelling is excellent, but the main character is not believable and off putting.

I loved this book. Great speculative fiction, a little sci-fi but still completely understandable. My little brain took a little to comprehend what was going on, but I was definitely here for it. The main character is a science guy who could've had a great career but ended up getting married and having a child. He kind of wondered "what-if" but was really happy in his life. He was on the way home from the bar celebrating a friend's science award when he is attacked and put into the car and brought to an abandoned location and told to take off all his clothes. And the guy is treating him awful. He's for sure thinking he's going to be killed. When all of a sudden, the demeanor changed. And he was given really nice clothes to change into, leather loafters. [SPOILER] The rest of the story gets crazy. He wakes up in a science lab and escapes. Not understanding why everyone is after him. The basis of the story is there are multiple parallel lines and each line is created when a choice is made in your life, meaning there are billions and billions of parallel lines and multiverses where you chose something different and ended up somewhere else. The main character in the life where he chose his career over getting married and having a kid, creates this box where you can't jump around in time, but you can "jump" to alternate parallel lines. Which means if you jump into another multiverse, technically, two of you exist in that universe. The science guy jump into the universe where he had chosne to be married and have a kid and switched universes with him. When the married guy ended up in the science universe, he had no idea who anyone was and what he had created, etc. It then starts a whole thing of him being chased and trying to get back to his wife and kid. Maybe now I need the spoiler - but in the end, he does get back to the universe where they exist. And at this point, so has many other of his counterparts from other universes, so there are hundreds of him running around the city. He's able to get his wife to come get him at the police station and they pick up their son from school and go to a secluded cabin. But their son turned his phone on for a second and all of his other "selves" or at least some, found him. And they were murderous. Not towards the wife and son, but towards him because they wanted that life so bad too. In the end, they're able to get back to "the box" and take the capsules, so they can go to a different universe where the rest won't follow because it was the son who opened up the door so it had his spin on so all the other guys wouldn't know where to follow. Super out there and I was really into it!

Another great novel by Blake Crouch, definitely a page turner, original thoughts and ideas, maintains the interest.

Really fun and gripping book! 4.5 stars rounded down. Would have rounded up if it wasn't for a plot hole (or at least what I perceived as a plot hole) in the last third of the book. Great sci-fi, characters you root for, fast paced narrative. Definitely enjoyed, and definitely recommend.

(And I won't say the plot hole here, because spoilers, but feel free to ask me if you've read the book.. Because I'd love to discuss it and have someone convince me that it wasn't a plot hole. That'd make me enjoy the novel even more.)

Way over-hyped. Good for ppl who like page-turners, hollywood adventure, but not as well-written or as deeply thought out as I like my modern SF. Good for ppl who like pulp SF? Or genre thrillers?
Glad I read it. But won't recommend, even to hubby who does like both thrillers and SF

Jason teaches college physics who gave up his chance to do ground-breaking research in his field in favor of starting a family with his beautiful artist wife. Both gave up promising careers for middling ones in order to put their marriage and raising their now-teenage son first. And both are happy with the decision with essentially no regrets beyond the occasional, casual ‘what if’ thoughts. Jason goes out one night to meet some old friends at a bar (a former college roommate has just won a prestigious physics award), and he doesn’t come back. He’s kidnapped, drugged, and wakes up in an alternate universe version of his life, one in which he never married and instead did the ground-breaking work he gave up in his own world. That research? Inventing a box that allows one to travel through the multiverse. He spends the rest of the book running from his colleagues in that world and searching for a way back to his own universe, his own version of his wife and son.

Meh. Typical first-person Capable White Man Doing Impressive Things While Running from Bad Guys and Fighting for His Best Girl thriller. But with Science! I guess? Not really my cuppa, I suppose.

i absolutely loved this book. great characters and concepts with many thrilling and tragic moments through out. the whole idea with alternate universes is not only a cool and crazy idea but it also reminds me of one of my favorite video game stories being Zero Escape 999 in some ways. so i was instantly hooked and can say this might be a contender of being an all time favorite for me

I read this book in 2 days, which I never do. All the while I was thinking “The science is wrong. Decoherence doesn’t need a conscious observer”, “The so-called super-intelligent protagonist is an idiot. I knew what was going on by chapter 3. Why doesn’t he?”, “Too much drinking and getting drunk. Is the author an alcoholic?”, “Not ANOTHER sex scene (yawn)”.
Despite the above, I enjoyed it. I cared about the characters. It is very well written. Some say the ending is lame. I couldn’t think of a better way to end it.

A pacy, well written sci-if action thriller based on the idea of multiple universes. Aside from the excitement of the plot, it is queasily scary in its portrayal of the philosophical implications of limitless multiverses - a kind of house of mirrors representation of the anxiety of making choices in complete isolation, of never being able to return to the life you know, of the cosmic and inhuman scale of an unfeeling infinity, of being haunted by versions of your own ‘self’. It’s an existential thriller too.

This is an excellent science fiction-based thriller, with a thought-provoking premise. If they're successful in making a movie of it, I look forward to seeing it.

This is a fast-reading science-fiction thriller, and every time I picked it up, I sped forward in reading it. Without any doubt, Crouch did an absolutely stellar job with his concept, and for the most part, he made believable characters. I was rooting for the protagonist throughout, and enjoying the twists.

That said, it was an oddly stressful read because it moved so fast and things remained so desperate throughout. There were also some loose ends that I'd have preferred be cleared up, although I understand why they weren't, given the POV, and so those don't even bother me particularly. But all told, I'm not sure when/if I'll read more Crouch work. It was almost too much, too fast, and too open-ended for me to be 100% satisfied.

Still, it's a fantastic book worth reading. I'm just not sure I want more of the same flavor.

"What a miracle it is to have people to come home to every day. To be loved. To be Expected. Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together."

This book is brilliant, twisted, and unbelievable. Despite not being a science fiction fan, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

Black Matter follows the story of Jason Desser, a college professor in Chicago, who lives an ordinary life with his wife and their son. Their life is sorted and they're happy. However, he gets abducted one day while on his way to buy ice cream. He later wakes up to find himself in a different version of Chicago - where he isn't married, doesn't have a child, and is famously a genius. And this is when the story begins to get crazy!

Jason and his pencil-skirted sidekick journey through various nightmarish versions of Chicago, trying to find his way home, from post-nuclear wasteland to arctic desert.

This is a fast-paced story. In fact, I find reading it to be such an effortless activity that it feels more like watching a movie that sucks you in completely. Blake Crouch's writing style is straightforward, making it ideal for science fiction beginners. There's no beating about the bush.

Sci-fi readers, do not miss this. And if you're new to the genre, this novel is the best place to start.

Amazing...

That was interesting. Now I'm gonna second guess every decision for next week.

Blake Crouch seems to make a habit of taking great ideas for science fiction novels, going as far as he can with the idea — and then going further. Much further. So this book, which starts out with quantum physics and multiple universes while telling a good human story about chances missed (a theme also explored in Recursion, which I recently read) — winds up with a completely bonkers ending. Still, Crouch writes very well, his characters are likeable and you do care about them, and he’s reinvigorated science fiction, at least for me, giving me the appetite to read more. So if you’re willing to accept a premise that’s going to go way off the charts, this is a recommended book.

a good sci-fi thriller...but somehow, it was just not for me. i dont really want to say more because i genuinely think a lot of other people will enjoy this and that they'll enjoy it better without any kind of spoilers. the third act earned this book a whole extra star for me.

Although predictable in many ways it is a decent brought story to enjoy.

This is definitely one of those books that it’s never too late to read! My literary wings thank you Blake Crouch for enlightening me, with this illuminating science fiction book. I am off to discover and deep dive into other worlds, I have been unknowingly missing in my life.

Genius!

Well, I didn't expect to read this in one day, but it's really fast-paced and not very long (lots of back matter). It was similar in theme to Recursion; I wish I had let more time lapse between reading the two. Not that reading one would ruin the other, just that both were based on a scientific breakthrough that got the characters involved in a runaway shifting reality (I think that's a general enough description to not be a spoiler).

This was a very quick read, a science-fiction thriller, involving not time travel, but travel between various realities or worlds being created as we make choices through-out our life and coexisting thereafter.

Jason is happily married to Daniela with a teenage son Charlie. He teaches science at a second rate small college, but at one time he was a promising scientist with a brilliant future. When Daniela got pregnant, he cut back on his career to become a family man, and Daniela cut short her promising career as an artist to be a stay-at-home mom.

One night walking home, Jason is attacked and kidnapped, and he finds himself roughly dispatched to another parallel world, one in which he is a prize-winning, world-famous scientist. He is not, however, married to Daniela and does not have a son. Despite the career satisfaction, he only wants to get back to Daniela and Charlie. The people he works for do not want to let him go however, and we are off and running.

I didn't try to understand the science behind this concept of parallel universes, but this mad fairly good reading as a thriller.

3 stars

First line: "I love Thursday nights."

Last line: "'We're right behind you.'"

Did you ever wonder how your life might be altered if you had made different choices along the way? Dark Matter explores this theme through science fiction based on the concepts of quantum mechanics, explained in a manner that is easily understood. It made me think about what constitutes personal identity. It also explores the emotional attachments to family, the balance between the personal and professional life, and how even seemingly small decisions can have large consequences in our daily lives.

It is a fast-moving story written in first person present. The writing style suggests a screenplay, with many short paragraphs and sentence fragments. Except for Jason, the main character, and to a lesser extent Daniela, his wife, the characters are rather thinly drawn, and there are a few plot holes, but overall, I felt it was thought-provoking, engaging, and entertaining. Recommended to fans of science fiction and those that enjoy thinking about the “what ifs” of life.

Salient quotes:
“Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together.”

“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.”

The first time the protagonist meets Daniela in an alternate universe, they are not married, they just used to be together, and of course they don't have a kid. So when he sees her at her art show, where she is a successful artist, he asks her where their kid is, Charlie. She doesn't know who he is talking about, of course.
" 'when you saw me tonight at the reception, the first thing you asked me was if I knew where "Charlie" was. Who's that?'
one of the things I love most about Daniela is her honesty. She has a direct link hardwired from her heart to her mouth. No filter, no self-revision. She says what she feels, without a shred of guile or cunning. She works no angles."
I was brought up to be like this, what he says: hardwired from my heart to my mouth. One day I realized that other people are not like this, and it shocked me. This causes me a lot of problems, because most people are not truthful, and they're thinking about how they can use you. However, I wouldn't be any other way, and I'm proud of it. And I don't care if somebody else doesn't believe that I'm like this.

The protagonist has a little flashback, after the first alternate Daniela is killed. In this touching family scene, he explains to her alternate universes, and it's helpful for somebody who is not a math/science person:
" 'but those other realities don't really exist.'
'actually, they're just as real as the one you and I are experiencing at this moment.'
'how is that possible?'
'It's a mystery. But there are clues. 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 called dark matter. And this dark matter makes up most of the known universe.'
'But what is it exactly?'
'no one's really sure. Physicists have been trying to construct new theories to explain its origin and what it is. we know it has gravity, like ordinary matter, but it must be made of something completely new.'
'A new form of matter.'
'exactly. Some string theorists think it might be a clue to the existence of the multiverse.'
She looks thoughtful for a moment, then asks, 'so all these other realities... Where are they?'
'Imagine you're a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. if someone were standing beside the pond, watching you, you'd have no idea they were there. To you, that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine that someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was the entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you're a part of a much larger and more mysterious reality then you had ever dreamed of.'
Daniela leans back in her chair and takes a sip of wine. 'So all these other thousands of ponds are all around us, right at this moment -- but we just can't see them?'
'Exactly.' "

Now comes explanation of what a tesseract is, and some quantum mechanics:
"the 4-D tesseract doesn't add a spatial dimension. It adds a temporal one.
It adds time, a stream of 3-D cubes, representing space as it moves along time's arrow.
This is best illustrated by looking up into the night sky at stars whose brilliance took 50 light years to reach our eyes. Or 500. Or 5 billion. We're not just looking into space, we're looking back through time.
Our path through this 4-D space-time is our world line (reality) beginning with our birth and ending with our death. Four coordinates (x, y, z, and t [time]) locate a point within the tesseract.
And we think it stops there, but that's only true if every outcome is inevitable, if Free Will is an illusion, and our worldline is solitary.
What if our worldline is just one of an infinite number of worldlines, some only slightly altered from the life we know, others drastically different?
The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posits that all possible realities exist. That everything which has a probability of happening is happening. Everything that might have occurred in our past did occur, only in another universe.
What if that's true?
What if we live in a fifth dimensional probability space?
What if we actually inhabit the multiverse, but our brains have evolved in such a way as to equip us with a firewall that limits what we perceive to a single universe? One worldline. The one we choose, moment to moment. It makes sense if you think about it. We couldn't possibly contend with simultaneously observing all possible realities at once.
So how do we access this 5-D probability space?
And if we could, where would it take us?"

And here's another little explanation that asks:
" 'why do people marry versions of their controlling mothers? Or absent fathers? To have a shot at righting old wrongs. Fixing things as an adult that hurt you as a child. Maybe it doesn't make sense at a surface level, but the subconscious marches to its own beat. I happen to think that world taught us a lot about how the box works.' "
I like to read any explanation that helps me understand why my abusive ex-husband married me. He's chicano, I'm white with an Irish ancestry. So, according to this, He married a white woman so he could try to get back at white people who hurt him as a kid.

That's all I'm going to quote out of this book. My cousin hated it and called it pedestrian, said he figured out the plot right from the beginning. That could be because he's smarter at math and science than I am.
I didn't like the romantic angle of it, because I don't believe in romantic love. But I did like this book for how it helped me get a little more peek into understanding quantum mechanics. Fascinating.

I liked it

If you could change the choices in your life would you? Very Interesting. Alternate Reality. Definitely worth reading.

The novel is a very speedy read – its very obvious that the author is comfortable with screenplays. I think he writes line-by-line, especially dialogue. The author never really turns this into a novel. I do not watch much TV and I never read screenplays, so this sort of writing did not grip me and pull me in.

I am not a quantum physicist, so I am not going to judge Crouch’s effort here from that angle. It seems to me that Crouch did not totally flub the science here. In fact, in several parts, he does a decent job of explaining to a reader what is going on, what is happening to the characters. Its not hard science that would block most readers who are not scientifically inclined, let us say.