When Politics Undercuts Storylines
Jess Holmes (@realtruthcactus)
Take a moment and imagine a world fueled by a passionate devotion to scientific oddities, high-octane action, and relatable and interesting characters. Now imagine that the author of this fascinating and engaging novel decides to undercut all of the rapport he’s built up with you as a loyal reader by bludgeoning you over the head with political propaganda. Welcome to the frustrating saga of the Blake Crouch Reader.
A Walk Through the Blake Crouch Universe
Dark Matter (2016) Review
The theories behind quantum mechanics are ripe for use by modern authors who know how to utilize the “spooky action at a distance” concept on the atomic level and expand its application to the macroscopic. Crouch’s unique approach to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics fleshes out the theory by throwing his hero–if he can rightly be called a hero–into a tangled web of worlds and scientific intrigue that remains gripping from start to finish.
In Crouch’s 2016 novel, Dark Matter, main character, Jason Dessen, a washed-up physics prodigy turned college professor, steps out of his everyday life and into the life he has always dreamed of having. But at what cost and by what means? Dessen’s character and the set-up of his normal, mundane life are incredibly relatable. Haven’t we all looked in the mirror at some point and wondered, “What if I made a different decision along the way? How different would my life be? How much better would my life be?” As Dessen soon discovers, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. What could descend into the overplayed trope of repeated do-overs is instead handled with great care and execution by Crouch, who hooks his readers into this mind-boggling world driven by real science.
This is the common theme across Blake Crouch novels. The author knows his science. His grasp on quantum theory is strong enough that it allows him to create a world so believable that readers will wonder if he is actually describing the reality already happening around us. But the science isn’t so many equations, numbers, and calculations that it numbs the everyday reader to sleep. Dark Matter is a book for both the newly minted graduate student and the neighborhood electrician who has never even heard of Erwin Schrödinger. The science in the novel is attainable to all and is the means by which he delivers his unwitting characters into chaos.
The characters in Dark Matter are agonizingly tangible. As Jason clutches and scrapes, hellbent on returning to his wife and son, we readers feel his desperate agony. We feel the agony of those around him, who want nothing more than to be reunited with their families, freed from the villainy they are caged in, or merely to survive. Dark Matter should come with a loud and clear warning – once you pick it up, you will not be able to put it down.
Recursion (2019) Review
While not in the same world as Dark Matter, Crouch takes another journey into the question of what-ifs in Recursion by exploring quantum mechanics’ relationship to the self, reality, and memory. What is man without his memory? Worse still, who is man if his memory is false? In a world plagued with a disease known as false-memory syndrome (FMS), how can people know who they really are if their memories conflict with reality? This is the chaotic puzzle Crouch throws NYC cop Barry Sutton and neuroscientist Helena Smith into. It is a tale that twists and turns so much upon itself that only once the final act has arrived can the readers follow the winding path Crouch had prepared all along.
This novel’s first act is much slower than Dark Matter, but once Recursion picks up speed, it doesn’t quit pushing. Minority Report meets Groundhog Day as this tale wraps readers in a tangled web of time travel, international deception, nuclear holocaust, love, and loss, all within a few hundred pages. As before, Crouch is a master craftsman in the field of scientific excellence, neither belittling his readers nor making the science overly complex for newcomers. And this book is a mindbender for more reasons than just the science. To say much more would spoil the chaos, as this is a book that must be experienced rather than just discussed in a simple review article.
What Crouch gets so right in this book is the moral weight of the choices made by all of the characters. Real sacrifice must be made to ‘save the day,’ real sacrifice that, no matter how braced you are for it, is still a hard pill to swallow. This is no sunshine and roses book, and while hope may sparkle in some areas, Crouch never shies away from the real consequences of altering the nature of reality and memory. As much as I enjoyed Dark Matter, Recursion is a more than worthy successor to the book that brought Crouch to the top in science fiction storytelling.
Upgrade (2022) Review
With two such strong science-fiction novels on his roster, Blake Crouch’s newest novel, Upgrade, should have been just that–another fast-paced tale with strong characters motivated by their love, moral fortitude, and courage to overcome a world wrought with scientific quackery.
And yet.
If you are a reader of Crouch’s earlier works, I am sorry to say that you will be heartily disappointed by the 180 downgrade turn Crouch decided to take in his latest novel. The premise itself is phenomenal and horrifyingly relevant. Utilizing genetic coding technology that is modeled after the real-life CRISPR gene-editing treatments, Crouch explores the possibilities of a world in which black-market geneticists can use viruses encoded with microscopic hacking devices to permanently alter a person’s DNA. This two-edged sword could make a person limitless, able to access all parts of their brain, utilize their muscles to full capacity, in short, make them the perfect superhuman…or it could cause them to die an excruciatingly painful death.
With such an eerily relevant topic in the post-COVID era, it is a shame, a real and perhaps inexcusable shame, that Crouch decided to overshadow such an important plot with climate change propaganda. His characters are set in the not-so-distant future, in a time when the sea levels have risen so high that New York City is underwater, the only food available is lab-grown meat, and all of civilization is on the verge of destruction—all as a result of mankind’s overconsumption of his own resources. We are supposed to believe that mankind has found a way to alter the very nature of the human genome but is unable to produce the technology to stave off mass extinction? This is just one of the numerous plot holes that run rampant through Upgrade.
It is also a shame that with such a strong bench of protagonists up to this point, Upgrade’s hero, Logan Ramsay, is a washout. After having his own genetic code altered, he embarks on a quest to discover the origin of the attack on his person, only to find that the origin is a little closer than he would have originally anticipated. He waxes poetic about his troubled past, his broken family history, how wonderful his wife and daughter are, and yet is willing to give up everything in his current world just to… do what exactly? It seems even Logan doesn’t know his own purpose in the story except to be used as a plot device to tell the reader how no good, very bad they are for eating meat, using electricity, and driving gas-powered vehicles. While Logan is the means by which the interesting scientific phenomena are conveyed, whatever may be interesting about his character and his life is overshadowed by a facade of propaganda and hackery.
Can Blake Crouch Rescue His Own World?
It is time for Blake Crouch to go back to his roots. It may be fashionable in our modern era to use art as a means to lecture one’s audience, but it is tiresome. One look at the self-destruction of media giants like Marvel and Disney shows a clear picture—people want art again. They want good stories. They want the action, the drama, the saving of the princess, the intrigue. What they don’t want, what we are all sick and tired of, is the political marketing. Crouch has already shown he can write brilliant, engaging, and impactful stories without using politics as a scapegoat. Frankly, he was lazy. He wanted to build a story quickly and get it out the door, so instead of taking the time to properly plot out an interesting framework for the Upgrade world, he created one cool science gimmick and hoped that the disaster-porn propaganda would be enough to carry the rest of the story through. But it’s not. Upgrade is far and away Crouch’s weakest work, and if his stories carry along in this line, he will lose everything that made him stand out.
Make good art free of politics again. Stop preaching. Just write good stories. The rest will take care of itself.