Recursion: A Novel Hardcover – June 11, 2019

RECURSION is an outstanding hard sci-fi novel from Blake Crouch. I decided to re-read Crouch's penultimate novel, DARK MATTER (2016), before RECURSION because I had a hunch that there might be some relation between the two. I’m glad I did. I raised my rating from 4 to 5 stars upon the re-read and realized that Crouch is right up there with the very best of the current generation of hard sci-fi authors.I’ve been reading Crouch for a long while. His earlier works were masterpieces of horror, often with no little or supernatural aspects (try ABANDON, for example). RECURSION is solid sci-fi dealing with such heady topics (heh heh) as the nature of memory, neuroscience, time, physics, philosophy and more. It starts with a plague of FMS, “False Memory Syndrome”, as one of the main protagonists, NYPD cop Barry Sutton is called to the scene of an impending suicide who suddenly remembers a totally different life than the one she is living. This FMS seems to be becoming something of a plague, and the number of suicides is rapidly rising. The novel explodes forwards from there. The other principal, Helena Smith, is a neuroscientist working on the neurophysiology of memory, in large part to try and build a device that could record her mid-stage Alzheimer's Disease mother's memories before they disappear forever. The sequela of her invention has implications that question our concepts of time, reality, the multiverse and more. I could not put the novel down, and read the whole thing in about 24 hours with 8 or so hours of sleep intercalated.Most Highly Recommended.JMps. In response to a really mean-spirited one star review that destroyed that science in the novel, I’d like to admit that I am a Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience at Rutgers and I thought ALL of the science and philosophy was spot on and very timely.

This book. This wonderful book. This wonderful, mesmerizing, highly entertaining book. I’ve been existing in a daze since I finished “Recursion” yesterday. Read it in one long reading marathon. If you remember how you felt after seeing “The Matrix”, when suddenly everything strange in the world made sense, you’re going to love the insight you’ll receive from this story. I don’t know if Blake is only impossibly gifted, or if he knows something the rest of us don’t (I’m suspecting both are true), but this guy writes with conviction. His skill at writing is exceptional, but it’s the characters that come to life under his pen that you’ll remember. Flawed, haunted, grieving both personally and for the world, the two main characters are folks you’d like to know, people you would hang with. People who step up to the plate and never tire of trying to knock it out of the park. The supporting cast is just as memorable and important to the tale, and come alive within the pages. You absolutely cannot go wrong buying this book. You will be highly entertained, but more importantly the concept will make you think, and maybe even open up some new neural pathways in that brain of yours. Go for it. You absolutely will not be sorry.

I realize sci-fi is speculative fiction, but this story borders on the ridiculous. The entire premise of the book is so far from scientifically sound as to be preposterous. The characters are more simulacra of real human beings. The action is boring. The romance contrived. The only thing this book has that is moderately redeeming is that, of this technology ever did exist, it would be grossly misused and abused by those in power. This, however, is an old hack (Stephenson did the same thing in D.O.D.O last year). In short, there is nothing new, interesting, or even thought-provoking here. Move on to something more worthy of your time.

One of those incredibly rare stories that really goes there when all hell breaks loose, the stakes getting higher and higher and higher until the read feels out of control, like you’re being drawn along by a narrative-equivalent of a runaway steam engine that’s not only on fire but running out of track. And then, by some miracle, it sticks the landing and you’re just shaking your head through the last few pages, in disbelief over what you just read. If, in my odd, gotta-compare-it-to-something brain, Crouch’s “Dark Matter” was his “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” this is his “I Am Legend.” A wonderful, fast-paced read that’ll contort your brain into shapes you didn’t think possible.

I just read ABANDON, another of Blake Crouch's books, an earlier one. I loved it. And because of that, I decided to read his latest, RECURSION. I liked the beginning a lot, got hooked on the characters and got ready for a good ride. Because I am not a science fiction reader I prepared myself for the unusual. 3/4 of the way through the book, I began scratching my head. Clearly, I am not smart enough for this sort of fare. So many life times! So many bloody noses and terrible headaches! And for what? Darned if I know. Never again. No more si-fy. This was a trippy nightmare I never did figure out or enjoy.

With the release of his phenomenal hard sci-fi novel, Dark Matter, Blake Crouch engraved himself in the minds of many readers as a master of psychological suspense. Now, three years later, it seems Crouch has found a niche and is, to the delight of his ensnared fans, mining it. Recursion is every bit as phenomenal as DM and is sure to satisfy anyone who loved that book.The novel opens with Barry Sutton, an NYPD officer, trying to coax a distraught woman away from the edge of a Manhattan rooftop as she tells him of her pain at remembering a life she never lived. "My son has been erased," are the final words she says to Barry before throwing herself off the building. This event is the catalyst that leads Barry to further investigation into a bizarre, unexplained condition called False Memory Syndrome (FMS) which causes people to develop memories of things that never actually happened.His investigation takes him down a path of shocking discovery with implications that could change the world forever.Sound vague? Well, this is a story you'll want to dive into without knowing a lot. It makes the many revelations and twists better - the same with DM.With a narrative built around questions of memory and consciousness, I found the descriptions of the characters' memories particularly vivid and convincingly tangible. I also liked that the story was told completely in the present tense as it made the scenes feel as though they were happening in the present moment and helped bring them to life.Recursion is perhaps more relevant to today than DM was, as there are references to things like the Mandela Effect, deja vu, and a recent real-life experiment where scientists successfully manipulated the memories of mice. Because these are things that have recently circulated pop culture, things people are familiar with, these references add a layer of realism to the story.The stakes are colossal, the characters are the perfect propelling forces of the story, and the big reveals are placed at exactly the right moments. Crouch is talented at putting super complicated ideas - involving things like quantum particle physics - into words in such a way that they are digestible to readers who aren't scientifically inclined. Recursion does get a tad convoluted and confusing towards the middle of the book, but this is probably inevitable with the scale and complexity of the ideas within it.I hope Crouch continues to write more books in this goldmine-of-a-niche he seems to have struck. They are gripping and unlike any other books I have read.

What if you could re-live your life to fix something that went wrong? What if that fix could only, inevitably, lead to only one horrifying conclusion that cannot be fixed? This is the nightmare of “Recursion”. I read this off the back of the reputation of Crouch’s “Dark Matter” (2016) which is the only example of his work that I am familiar with. “Dark Matter” was stunning and “Recursion” is very much in the same mould. Both share a mind-bending premise that deals with how our perception of reality makes our reality. This was a concept so beloved of Philip K Dick that it is of no surprise that the parallels have been drawn. Think "Minority Report" meets "Total Recall" with a whole bunch a brain-bending conundrums that PKD could never have dreamt of. Crouch’s stories have an impact at an emotional level. His characters are place into torturous personal situations where it looks like there is no hope of them ever being reunited with the people they love. When that moment of re-connection is delivered Crouch’s writing becomes dense and heart wrought. He delivers an intensity and agony revealing the inner landscape of the human experience in a fashion you seldom see in any kind of fiction today. This extends to something beyond mere sci fi. It is a sub-genre apart. A kind of emo-sci-fi. The two books have a scientific basis for the technology that are ingenious and original. Yet they are also so important to the resulting narrative. This is not the sort of fiction that throws in a time machine or inter-dimensional travel device as a gimmick then spins an all-too-familiar yarn. In Crouches books the device is central to the plot yet the technology only works inside a framework of the irrationality of the human mind. This is not a universe of simple cause and effect. The characters have not got a piece of cool tech where they punch in some code to do something predictable. The outcomes are as wildly unpredictable, difficult and complicated as tech’s operators are. It is our humanity – how we think - that is key to how the technology screws up the world. This goes beyond simple story telling about money, power, greed or jealousy. The story-magic revolves around characters suffering loss, over-reaching ambition or simply love. This book is tight, fast moving and gripping. You will not want to put it down. An utter adrenaline-rush-joy-ride.

Wow. So many loopholes. The biggest misgiving I have with this book is about the science. When a person doesn't do a proper research and just vaguely uses scientific terms to explain away a script requirement, it feels so irritating like how all the modern gurus of India try to explain modern science using some vague spiritual terms .His Dark Matter was based on solid science concepts and was a pretty unique idea well thought out. But this book just feels like he was high while thinking out the plot. And pages and pages of unnecessarily timelines. I am still surprised how so many people loved this book and is rated higher than Dark Matter on goodreads . Some of the misgivings I have apart from the laughable way he tries a lot to connect memory and time just randomly quoting famous people is that how does doing something to tour brain/memories affect a different persons memories though they are in your social circle? He talks about merging memories from different timelines but how is your memory affecting time itself? He tries to address this after 70% book is over probably when someone familiar with actual science raised the same point after reading a draft and the way he tries to explain away is also very pathetic. He just randomly throws away words like blackhole wormhole and Hope's people dont notice.After reading 5 Blake Crouch books back to back, I think Wayward Pines trilogy is his best work and then Dark Matter. Dark Matter has a very unique and believable concept though poorly written and which badly needed an editor. This book doesn't have either of them. I am surprised because the books I liked most were the ones he wrote first and he quality (atleast according to me) is just degrading with every book.I would say, read Dark Matter again instead of reading this book. You can give this a miss.

Kudos to the creator of a beast with more lives than a cat sanctuary. Reading this felt like I’d fallen down a thousand rabbit holes, which I was compelled to leap into again, and again.How in hell such a colossal yet effortlessly evolving plot manifested from anyone’s brain I guess I’ll never know. But I am convinced their house is wallpapered in trillions of Post-It notes and they can’t have slept for at least five years.The timeline is never-ending loop that is over-written with almost every page turn. As a result it contains a bounty of memories forged by characters whose intentions form the tip of a ruddy great iceberg of unforeseeable consequences.Interfering with the natural order of events will certainly raise moral eyebrows everywhere, particularly as the ordinary folk featured in this tale are carried along by events but are unable to process the overlapping confusion that ensues.In short, this book is a crisscrossing, mind-melting imagining of mammoth proportions and I’m delighted to have stumbled across it by happy accident, as its concept commanded my full attention throughout. Would seek out this author again for sure.

Recursion is a sci-fi thriller that revolves around a memory chair, a device with which it is possible to go back in time to relive your life from a certain point. However, once you reach the anniversary of using the chair everyone begins to remember their past lives, which causes chaos and confusion. After reading Blake Crouch's previous book, Dark Matter I was a bit worried that I would not love Recursion as much. As it turns out I don't love it as much, but it is still a pretty enjoyable sci-fi thriller. As people remember their past lives, in what the characters dub 'dead memories' the book seems to have echoes of Dark Matter which, while an interesting concept, if not conducive to being able to review this book fairly. Regardless of the actual plot this book just did not feel as well written as Dark Matter and if I didn't know any better I would have said that this had been written first. Overall it is a strange little book and definitely not as bad as some reviews make it out to be.