Houston Southard

Blake Crouch - Dark Matter

The media is saturated with multiverse stories, but only a few rise to the top. This is one of those stories.

A physicist gets thrust into the multiverse in the only way someone theoretically can be: through some craftily-constructed quantum superposition. A machine reminiscent of schrodinger's cat in which whatever's placed inside gets locked in from all outside stimuli and cannot be observed. Without any outside observation, whatever's inside is both there and not there simultaneously, allowing its containing passenger to move through alternate universes, just not quite at will.

The multiverse gives readers the best butterfly effect storyline, where our main character ends up in realities where different past decisions have altered his present, and not in ways that turn out to be great. He goes on a crusade to get back to his home universe but ends up leaving a door open for other versions of him to follow him back and make things... complicated.

It's a story about regret and loss, hard decisions and heartbreak, and lots and lots of wrinkles. All of it break-neck, high-octane goodness.

If you're a fan of Andy Weir but get exhausted by a little too much sci- in your sci-fi, Blake Crouch is who you want to read. This and his newer books, Recursion and Upgrade respectively, are a little too hard to put down. The story moves so fast with so much story and action jam-packed into its 300-odd pages that you're left with little choice but to barrel through along with it until it's over.

Apple TV+ has picked it up for a series order with Joel Edgerton helming the protagonist Jason Desson, and it's going to be absolutely nuts.

Dark Matter is Dark, and it matters. Cozy up in a dark nook and make it matter to you too.