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Cover of Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Dark Matter

  • 366 pages · about 6 hours
  • First published 2016
  • 23 editions

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1 About this book

One night after an evening out, Jason Dessen, forty-year-old physics professor living with his wife and son in Chicago, is kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man, driven to an abandoned industrial site and injected with a powerful drug.

As he wakes, a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend." But this life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife; his son was never born; and he's not an ordinary college professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that's the dream? How can he possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could have imagined--one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

  • Science fiction
  • Thrillers
  • Mystery
  • Kidnapping
  • Reality
  • Technological

2 What to expect

A science fiction thriller built on the idea of parallel worlds: a physics professor is abducted and wakes in a version of his life in which he never married and became a celebrated scientist instead. His attempt to get home to his wife and son drives a fast chase. It is written in short, punchy paragraphs, moves at great speed, and is more about love and the roads not taken than about the physics.

Good for readers who want: a fast science fiction thriller, parallel worlds, and a love story at its core.

3 About Blake Crouch

Born 1978

William Blake Crouch (born October 15, 1978) is an American author known for books such as Dark Matter, Recursion, Upgrade, and his Wayward Pines Trilogy, which was adapted into a television series in 2015. Dark Matter was adapted for television in 2024.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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