Recursion by Blake Crouch

After finishing Dark Matter, I was excited to see Blake Crouch’s new book, Recursion, up on Netgalley.  Recursion is another scifi novel that blends a pageturner with a thought experiment. Here, Crouch plays with travel through time, instead of the multiverse, but the themes of fixing mistakes, returning to a soul mate, and obsessive dedication to science return.

Recursion begins as random people begin suffering from a confusing psychological phenomena, False Memory Syndrome.  False Memory Syndrome is just detailed enough to remind you of every moment of deja vu in a place that should be unfamiliar, or that weird feeling that something’s missing. People suffering from FMS commit suicide when they’re unable to reconcile what they know to be their past with the life they have now.

In one life, a lab assistant realized the value of his boss’ work and, after using his repeating lifetimes to become a multi-billionaire, he builds an entire research station and funds her work into the time-traveling chair.  With round after round of memorizing the final form and then rebooting into the past with a lifetime of betatesting, the time-traveling chair would require a lifetime of technobabble to explain that it takes one person back in time. Naturally, this starts as a way to avert tragedies and disasters, but over time (SEE WHAT I DID THERE???) it becomes clear that this can be used for much more sinister purposes. Plus, each change sets off more False Memory Syndrome. This section leans into scifi tropes, like the nosebleeds of mental exertion or the fraying fabric of much-altered spacetime, but it works. 

The plot works fine, and I enjoyed the author’s continued exploration into two people searching for each other in an unforgiving scifi landscape, but it’s the worldbuilding that stays in my mind. The reports of False Memory Syndrome, how one person knows the world is wrong because they have another life while everyone around them is sure that nothing’s happened makes a disturbing premise, and darkly realistic for our world of post-truth news.