“It’s terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches off into a new world.” – Dark Matter, Blake Crouch
Imagine there are infinite realities, and infinite versions of yourself. What would each reality look like? Who would you be? This is a common manifestation question, but it’s also the theme of many popular movies and television series about parallel realities. When I first read the international New York Times bestseller Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, I read it in one sitting and could not put it down – it was that good, and creepily enough, the 2016 book even had plot lines that seemed to predict the pandemic, a la The Simpsons style. This sci fi psychological thriller is now being adapted on screen into an Apple TV series starring Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly. It will premiere on May 8th, and here’s what you need to know about the book before you watch it.
The series is about a former physics professor is kidnapped and is forced to experience parallel realities where he made different choices, exploring the different paths his life could take.
In the book, former quantum mechanics physicist Jason Dessen is kidnapped and drugged, wakes up in a science lab and stumbles out of a metal box, only to enter an alternate universe in Chicago where he never married the woman of his dreams and instead decided to pursue his career as a physicist. The book has many plot twists and turns and shocking discoveries as Jason struggles to navigate this new alternate reality and recognize how the choices he made led to a different destiny – and discover the identity of the person who abducted him in the first place. Such a riveting plot allows readers to think about their own choices in life, and how the detours and decisions they made may have led to a different “reality” for themselves in each facet of their lives. What if we had made different decisions? How would life look different? Major spoiler alert: Unbeknownst to the scientists in the lab, this is not the “original” Jason they’ve been working with, and the other Jason has taken over his life in his reality using the device the “other Jason” created to access every possible reality.
At its core, Dark Matter is – well, a dark and disturbing love story.
In the book, it’s not just Jason who is affected by his decisions. His wife Daniela, who he never married, ends up being a famous artist without marriage and children holding her back in one of the parallel realities he gets to experience. Jason is met with both horrifying, disturbing new facets of this alternate universe – as well as the temptations of a different life, and the fact that his wife may be thriving in a different universe, as a single, independent, successful artist. He meets many “parallel” versions of his wife, and while he has love for each “version,” he ultimately longs for the one in his original reality. As he navigates both the consequences and benefits of his decisions, he still stays true to his mission: finding his “original” wife in the universe he came from. Very romantic, but it does beg the disturbing question to the reader – even if these two are happy together in one universe, who does it really benefit, if there are other possibilities?
“What a strange thing to consider imagining a world into being with nothing but words, intention, and desire.” – Dark Matter, Blake Crouch
Dark Matter presents us with an unsettling conundrum: is the reality we’re choosing the one that’s best for everyone involved, not just ourselves? In a fictional universe where every possibility is present and everyone can inhabit a different “version” of reality, readers get to confront these questions in this thriller. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of parallel reality movies and tv series is the fact that there are so many infinite possibilities, and Dark Matter challenges us to explore them all.
