One night after an evening out, Jason Dessen, forty-year-old physics professor living with his wife and son in Chicago, is kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man, driven to an abandoned industrial site and injected with a powerful drug. As he wakes, a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend." But this life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife; his son was never born; and he's not an ordinary college professor, but a celebrated genius who has …
One night after an evening out, Jason Dessen, forty-year-old physics professor living with his wife and son in Chicago, is kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man, driven to an abandoned industrial site and injected with a powerful drug. As he wakes, a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend." But this life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife; his son was never born; and he's not an ordinary college professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something impossible. Is it this world or the other that's the dream? How can he possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could have imagined--one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe. --
This is gonna be a hard one to review without spoiling because I was mostly checked out on this story until around the 85% mark, where something happened that finally made me sit forward with attention. But lets get the early stuff out of the way first.
In theory I don't need my science fiction to have really elaborate worldbuilding and spaceships and aliens and whatnot. I'll concede that it is possible to tell a compelling story in a contemporary setting that has just one or two elements that give it that ~sci-fi~ spin on it, which is what we get here and we figure that out pretty early on. But when you start playing around with infinities and infinitesimally small chances for certain events to happen, it's gonna feel cheap and unearned when those best-case scenarios... happen.
We have in Jason Dessen what I found to …
This is gonna be a hard one to review without spoiling because I was mostly checked out on this story until around the 85% mark, where something happened that finally made me sit forward with attention. But lets get the early stuff out of the way first.
In theory I don't need my science fiction to have really elaborate worldbuilding and spaceships and aliens and whatnot. I'll concede that it is possible to tell a compelling story in a contemporary setting that has just one or two elements that give it that ~sci-fi~ spin on it, which is what we get here and we figure that out pretty early on. But when you start playing around with infinities and infinitesimally small chances for certain events to happen, it's gonna feel cheap and unearned when those best-case scenarios... happen.
We have in Jason Dessen what I found to be a fundamentally unlikable protagonist, and I don't know that the author intended for him to come off that way. He's a chauvinist who has an almost possessive relationship towards his wife that goes beyond mere affection that made me uncomfortable, and for all of his academic accolades (of which we're reminded of frequently), he makes frustrating decisions and just kind of fails upwards and into the right trajectory because why wouldn't he?
This story had the potential for some truly Shakespearean levels of tragedy and copped out for an ambiguous but mostly feel-good ending that felt undeserved. Call me a psychopath, but I just feel that these characters did not suffer enough for my enjoyment to get the wrap-up that they did (holy shit, that sounds insane now that I'm reading that). Anyway, if you want to read something else that also tackles themes of regret and "what ifs", read Militia House by John Milas.
Das Buch ist eine Mischung aus Thriller und Science Fiction und hat durchaus ein paar interessante Ansätze zum Thema Multiversum und Zeitreisen.
Die Protagonisten kommen aber eher etwas flach daher.
Insgesamt kurzweilige Unterhaltung.
Il paradosso del gatto di Schrödinger è appunto un paradosso: la meccanica quantistica non si può applicare a oggetti macroscopici, complessi e vivi. Ok al multiverso per protoni elettroni a quanti vari ma per quanto riguarda gli esseri umani il semplice parlarne ti fa "precipitare" in un film Marvel popolato di Dr. Strange.
Fatta questa premessa secondo me l'autore è molto bravo nello sviscerare aspetti e conseguenze che nei fumetti e nei film dei supererori non vengono ovviamente presi in considerazione: la trama risulta avvincente ed i personaggi sono ben contestualizzati nelle diverse "scatole" che si alternano. Un po' deluso per il finale che, pur calandosi nella realtà del multiverso, risulta comunque poco sensato per i protagonisti.
