Dark Matter (2016)
Blake Crouch
Ever feel like you were your own worse enemy?
Well I bet you never had another version of yourself pop
out of the multiverse and switch places with you swooning your lovely wife and
sucking up to your 15 year old kid - much better then you ever did. That is how it all starts off for Jason Dessen. A middling Physics professor at a small
Chicago college who threw a way a promising research career to support his marry
a beautiful and talented artist who was pregnant with their child. She too sacrificed her career for the
family. In another part of the
multiverse, Jason 2 apparently made the other choice and invented multiverse
hopping but wanted his cake and eat it too by taking over the sweet family life
the Jason 1 had created.
It is a fast action adventure and takes the multiverse
spin in a much different direction then Bennett’s American Elsewhere. Here the monster is you - or almost you.
Once Jason 1 realizes what has been done to him and that
Jason 2’s universe is going to be lethal he heads out on his own multiverse
hunt eventually finding his way back home.
But he is not alone in wanting what Jason 2 stole from him and that is
where the adventure really begins.
Jason 1 does not make the choices that I would make - at least up to the end. For a genius he sure makes some bonehead
mistakes and nearly gets himself and his personal shrink – Amanda - killed.
How do you fool yourself? When
each of you knows basically the same things and minds work pretty much the
same. Except, of course, that there are
varying degrees of homicidal tendencies in all the Jason’s who have survived
the labyrinth of the multiverse to arrive in their “home” Chicago.
Which makes me wonder, what happened to Amanda(s). Should there have been more than one if there
are so many Jason’s? Just saying. She liked Jason so you might think that at
least one version would have tried to follow him.
Finally, what will be the key to getting out of this world with so many
Jason’s?
