- Kroese, Robert.
Schrödinger's Gat.
Seattle: CreateSpace, 2012.
ISBN 978-1-4903-1821-9.
-
It was pure coincidence (or was it?) that caused me to pick up
this book immediately after finishing Dean Radin's
Real Magic (May 2018),
but it is a perfect fictional companion to that work.
Robert Kroese, whose
Starship Grifters (February 2018)
is the funniest science fiction novel I've read in the last
several years, here delivers a tour
de force grounded in quantum theory, multiple worlds,
free will, the nature of consciousness, determinism versus
uncertainty, the nature of genius, and the madness which can
result from thinking too long and deeply about these
enigmatic matters. This is a novel, not a work of philosophy
or physics, and the story moves along smartly with interesting
characters including a full-on villain and an off-stage…well,
we're not really sure. In a postscript, the author explicitly
lists the “cheats” he used to make the plot work
but notes, “The remarkable thing about writing this book
was how few liberties I actually had to take.”
The story is narrated by Paul Bayes (whose name should be a clue
we're about to ponder
what we
can know in an uncertain world), who we meet as he is ready
to take his life by jumping under a BART train at a Bay Area
station. Paul considers himself a failure: failed crime writer,
failed father whose wife divorced him and took the kids, and
undistinguished high school English teacher with little hope of
advancement. Perhaps contributing to his career problems, Paul
is indecisive. Kill himself or just walk away—why not
flip a coin? Paul's life is spared through the intervention of
a mysterious woman who he impulsively follows on a madcap
adventure which ends up averting a potential mass murder on San
Francisco's Embarcadero. Only after, does he learn her name,
Tali. She agrees to meet him for dinner the next day and explain
everything.
Paul shows up at the restaurant, but Tali doesn't. Has
he been stood up? He knows next to nothing about Tali—not
even her last name, but after some time on the Internet
following leads from their brief conversation the day before
he discovers a curious book by a recently-retired Stanford
physics professor titled Fate and
Consciousness—hardly the topics you'd expect
one with his background to expound upon. After reading
some of the odd text, he decides to go to the source.
This launches Paul into an series of adventures which cause him
to question the foundations of reality: to what extent do we
really have free will, and how much is the mindless gears of
determinism turning toward the inevitable? Why does the
universe seem to “fight back” when we try to impose
our will upon it? Is there a “force”, and can we
detect disturbances in it and act upon them? (The technology
described in the story is remarkably similar to the one to which I have
contributed to developing and deploying off and on for the
last twenty years.) If such a thing could be done, who might be
willing to kill to obtain the power it would confer? Is the
universe a passive player in the unfolding of the future, or
an active and potentially ruthless agent?
All of these questions are explored in a compelling story with
plenty of action as Paul grapples with the mysteries confronting
him, incorporating prior discoveries into the emerging picture.
This is an entertaining, rewarding, and thought-provoking read
which, although entirely fiction, may not be any more weird than
the universe we inhabit.
The Kindle edition is free for Kindle
Unlimited subscribers.
May 2018 