Fascinating and frightening and completely absorbing!
The Quantum Revelations by Stuart Heinrich is a riveting science fiction tale that is fascinating, frightening, and completely absorbing. Teasing and teaching, with its plot of humanity on the path to the end times, I couldn’t put this book down.
The main character, Skyler Wexler, is a doctoral student in quantum physics, working on a classified, grant-supported project at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, when he makes a breakthrough that could advance his field of study and garner him global recognition, and maybe even the approval of his renowned but emotionally distant physicist father. But what he thinks he’ discovered and what the reality is may be two very different things. But with society on the brink of collapse due to an accelerating climate crisis, it may not matter.
Skyler’s story is compelling reading, from the book’s explosive opening to its almost gentle, eye-opening conclusion. The author presents a vividly wretched picture of the U.S., suffering from the effects of an accident in the Arctic ice and the denial of impending doom cultivated by an all-too-powerful president and news media, and the many parallels to current conditions lend the tale a definite feeling of realism. Skyler and his lab partner, Zara, are relatable, regular students, and I was quickly invested in their stories: Skyler with his desire for parental approval and Zara with her hospitalized, comatose mother.
While there is plenty of action, investigation, and plot twists, there is a lot of discussion about the hypotheses that make up quantum physics and much of that are Skyler’s internal monologues as he struggles with determining what his experiment has produced, the current state of the field, discarded alternate hypotheses, which are then repeated when he has someone to argue with or share his thoughts. His ruminations help clarify what’s at stake for those not conversant with the science, and they lay out Skyler’s thought processes, but this tended to go on a little long. And, if long passages of theoretical head-scratching are not your thing, just know the payoff is coming. I loved that Skyler had his own breakthrough after a casual observation by the girl next to him on his flight home from a professional conference that netted him nothing in the way of insight into his research problems.
I recommend THE QUANTUM REVELATIONS to readers of hard
science fiction.
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