SF/F Book Review: Quantum Night by Robert J Sawyer https://t.co/chnCvJoOSy Short Review: 4 out of 10 (1/4)— garik16 (@garik16) November 6, 2017
Short Review (cont): Quantum Night is a thought experiment dressed up like a thriller that uses some really silly ideas & plot setups (2/4)— garik16 (@garik16) November 6, 2017
Short Review (cont): in order to setup the central proposition the author wants to deal with. Sometimes Interesting, Often BONKERS. (3/4)— garik16 (@garik16) November 6, 2017
Quantum Night is......an interesting book. The book is definitely written in the form of a SciFi Thriller - like a novel by Michael Crichton for example - but while the book adheres in large part to that format - infodumps as to science developments and theories, a mystery involving the science that drives a good portion of the plot, etc. - the book turns out to want to be something else entirely: A book that has a couple of ideas and wants to explore the intersections of these ideas. This is not a character driven novel in any way shape or form and well the book isn't trying to be.
It's also - and I'm not sure I can stress this enough - INCREDIBLY silly. The book's ideas in the abstract aren't silly - mainly the book is concerned with what makes someone a psychopath and what makes someone have a conscience, as well as the ethics of utilitarianism as a guiding philosophy in the face of these ideas - but the execution of these ideas is often extremely laughable. I did not buy at all the scientific ideas that form a foundation for this book but maybe others might buy those more credibly, but well - the book sets up a global political crisis that is INCREDIBLY laughable and with little justification other than "we need something to drive the characters to make choices in the end!"
In short, I'm not sure this book can be considered good...but it certainly can't be considered boring in any way.
More after the jump:
---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
Jim Marchuk is a psychologist who has developed an experimental new technique for distinguishing psychopaths from the general population. He's also a rigorous follower of the theory of utilitarianism, which he uses to guide his life, and which led to the break up of his first marriage. But when he discovers that he has a six month hole in his memory from when he was in graduate school, he finds that he might not know his own personality as well as he thinks.
This becomes even more true when he is contacted by Kayla Huron, a physicist who seems to have been his girlfriend during the missing six months, who teaches him that there might be a quantum physics explanation for his discovery about psychopaths. But their discoveries, as well as Jim's investigation into what happened in the six months, will take the two of them to discover a truth about human nature perhaps even more menacing than the simple discovery that there are far more psychopaths in the world than anyone has previously thought.
And this discovery promises a possibility of massive change in the world, if someone can make a choice to enact such a change unwillingly upon the global population. But when the world itself threatens to erupt into utter chaos, can Jim, and Kayla, who he comes to love, make the ultimate choice for so many people?
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I've decided to leave as much of the plot vague in the above plot summary as I possibly can, as the conflict involves a scientific discovery that spoiling will spoil a large part of the plot. To be honest, I found these scientific postulates in this book to be incredibly laughable, and the book treating them as true made everything seem REALLY silly. And the book seems in large part entirely set-up to create the circumstances for the choice in the conclusion, so it's hard to be more specific without basically ruining any point of reading.
I will say this though, the book reads fairly well despite the common infodumps in the first half, and the plot moves at a brisk pace throughout. The flashbacks work well without being distracting, and while none of the characters are particularly likable or enjoyable - Jim's utilitarian obsession is kind of hard to believe or like - none of them are particularly awful either.
The issue is that well as I've mentioned above, both the setup and the ideas themselves in the book are incredibly silly-sounding and at time seem outright stupid. In order to setup the crisis that will drive the conclusion, the book postulates an absolute crazy sequence of global events which even in today's world seems utterly insane - let's just say one part of this involves hockey riots overtaking all of Canada and resulting in an American "peacekeeping" annexation of Canadian territory, for example. It's hard to read such events without cracking up at the stupidity.
And the ideas themselves, if they could be executed well at all, are certainly not here. One of the central ideas is that human beings have three states of having a conscious mind - doing everything unconsciously, doing things consciously but without a conscience (being a psychopath), and doing things consciously with a conscience. Several characters are shown in these states, with a few characters changing between them due to effects of the plot, and the changes in personalities between these states is SO dramatic it's pretty hilarious. Again, I didn't buy the idea itself as its presented, but the execution is so off the wall and exaggerated as to be....well something.
The end result is not a boring book.....but one that feels at time incredibly silly or even stupid, despite the use of scientific concepts. It certainly made me laugh a bunch.
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