Dexter Palmer

A woman deals with a strange and persistent sense of everything being slightly off, which may or may not be related to her scientist husband's pet project, a "causality violation device" that might actually be working.

Version Control

Dexter Clarence Palmer

Kurt Haffner

Went in to this thinking it would be a time travel book, really more of a slow wander through the minutiae of a couple people's lives. 

<spoiler>I just don't understand why this lady went back in time to save her ass of a husband. Also, there is an entire "president is controlled by the shadow government" subplot that just kind of ends with no real exploration.</spoiler>

Cindy Lieberman

This is a fascinating and complex novel about time travel (sorry, “causality”) and how we deal with pain and loss, scientific research, love, and more. It’s set in the near-ish future where there are completely self driving cars but also persistent racism and misogyny in the workplace; where dating apps make up characters to keep us interested in staying online so they can monetize their user base; where the president has been reduced to an avatar that interrupts your video calls to proffer advice on the private conversation you’ve been having. An interesting discussion of Kant’s moral philosophy as well. Lots to digest. Not for everyone, but a treat for the intellectually curious.

brendan sudol

i felt like it was trying to do too much and i just wanted a fun time-travel yarn

Leafling

Version Control is a time travel book that surprised me in so many ways. I was having some bookish commitment issues lately. I kept starting books then moving on to new ones. So you wouldn't think I'd go for a 512 page chunkster in this situation, right? Well, I did and it paid off. Dexter Palmer has written a subtle and completely immersive novel covering all sorts of my favorite topics such as: online dating, wormholes, memory, loss, big data, difficult marriages, and technology. I was so gripped throughout.

In the near future (ten years or so ahead of us), Rebecca struggles with her job, with a horrible loss, with her relationship with her husband, and with alcohol. Her husband, Philip, invests all of his time in his work on the causality violation device and grows more distant from her. The book moves back and forth in time fluidly, letting us get to know the characters' pasts gradually. It's heart-wrenching. And at the same time that this book had me in its clutches emotionally (I definitely cried), it was hilarious when it comes to commentary on our modern lives. I was laughing constantly throughout the commentary on online dating and how we use the internet. Seeing the groups of scientists interact was also brilliant, and what Palmer had to say about the science world was often biting.

Some of the near future bits feel very close: self driving cars; and some feel very far away: personalized video calls from the president before tv shows, during meals, etc. But it's all plausible and fascinating. And once things start to get a little weird, once time gets a little more complicated than it at first seemed, the book travels subtly into scary and amazing territories of what's possible.

I can't imagine this book is for everyone. But at the same time, I'm someone who favors tiny books. The closer to a novella, the better. And I also get bored relatively easily and don't suffer slow plots gladly. So I have to come to the conclusion that this book is very interesting (theoretically and emotionally), and also well written. It's not action packed in the way a lot of time travel books tend to be. Its pace is slower, but steadily moves forward, offering us depth in exchange for thrills. It's also science heavy, which I absolutely loved. Palmer makes the assumption that smart people are reading his book and that they actively enjoy puzzling things (the nature of space-time) out; that they enjoy taking a moment to sit and ponder what the book's implying might be possible both within the story and in our own world.

It's hard to think of things that were bad about this book. Perhaps it was longer than it needed to be. It wasn't completely mind blowing. But this is a complicated book full of ideas that feels more like an experience than a novel. Once you've taken this journey with these characters, it's going to be nearly impossible not to immediately flip back to the beginning and look for where Palmer deftly began putting things in place that we missed earlier. I, personally, can't wait.

Full Review: Outlandish Lit

Jeremy Cote

I thought this was a pretty good read. It had some interesting elements of a near-future society that has made a lot of technological progress, and there were many good themes throughout. Still, I thought that there may have been a little *too* many things going on in the book. A more streamlined story might have worked better tempo-wise, but I thought the book was good nonetheless.

An NPR, GQ, and Buzzfeed Best Book of the Year One of The Washington Post’s best science fiction and fantasy books of the year The acclaimed author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion returns with a compelling novel about the effects of science and technology on our friendships, our love lives, and our sense of self. Rebecca Wright has reclaimed her life, finding her way out of her grief and depression following a personal tragedy years ago. She spends her days working in customer support for the internet dating site where she first met her husband. But she has a strange, persistent sense that everything around her is somewhat off-kilter: she constantly feels as if she has walked into a room and forgotten what she intended to do there; on TV, the President seems to be the wrong person in the wrong place; her dreams are full of disquiet. Meanwhile, her husband's decade-long dedication to his invention, the causality violation device (which he would greatly prefer you not call a “time machine”) has effectively stalled his career and made him a laughingstock in the physics community. But he may be closer to success than either of them knows or can possibly imagine. Version Control is about a possible near future, but it’s also about the way we live now. It’s about smart phones and self-driving cars and what we believe about the people we meet on the Internet. It’s about a couple, Rebecca and Philip, who have experienced a tragedy, and about how they help—and fail to help—each other through it. Emotionally powerful and stunningly visionary, Version Control will alter the way you see your future and your present.

Version Control

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