Bonus Book July 2024: ‘Recursion’ by Blake Crouch
BOOK DESCRIPTION
That's what NYC cop Barry Sutton is learning, as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome—a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived.
That's what neuroscientist Helena Smith believes. It's why she's dedicated her life to creating a technology that will let us preserve our most precious memories. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent.
As Barry searches for the truth, he comes face to face with an opponent more terrifying than any disease—a force that attacks not just our minds, but the very fabric of the past. And as its effects begin to unmake the world as we know it, only he and Helena, working together, will stand a chance at defeating it.
But how can they make a stand when reality itself is shifting and crumbling all around them?
MAUDE’S BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS: ‘RECURSION’:
Book 1: The Set Up. How quickly did you figure out Barry, the world, the technology and the situation? How quickly were you hooked?
Was the science of this science fiction sciencing? Did it make sense, did you follow it, did it take you out ever?
At what point in the book did your anxiety take the wheel?
Why is ETHICS an important discussion with this technology?
Why is CONTROL important with the memory chair? He who controls the chair controls the events of the world.
How do you think you’d cope with having ‘dead’ memories of another life lived? Would you be able to separate what’s real from what’s not? What do you think the mental health implications would be?
AVERY (Book Club Member):
How about, if you could go back and change something, would you?
Or, is it possible to use technology like that ethically?
VAIDAN (Book Club Member):
What happens if multiple people go back at the same time? Could separate timelines be triggered simultaneously?
When people's dead memories come back, they have a pain in their head and bleed a bit out of their nose. Could a large number of individuals from different timelines have saved points at the same point in time and returned to them, causing a massive bleed that kills everyone?
Slade and Helena mention that living so many lives causes them to degrade over time as their minds can't handle so many memories. If a person had a photographic memory, could such an individual be able to deal with the negative effects of it?
The technology was created relatively quickly to return to memories, but I don't see why it couldn't be improved even further with more research and development. What happens when people cannot only return to a previous memory of their own but other people's?
Catch22 (Book Club Member):
If everyone remembers all their dead memories, including the times they died, why didn’t Helena remember that she figured out how to go back to dead memories before Slade killed her if she remembered that Slade killed her?
If you boil this book down to its fundamental plot, it’s Sphere by Michael Crichton.
Multiverse theory makes this book an interesting thought puzzle. Consider that every possible outcome of every possible decision ever made happens in an alternate universe. It begs the question, in how many universes was the chair even created? How many of them were one nuclear holocaust and done? In how many of them did Helena solve the dead memories issue right away? How many was it Barry? How many of them did Helena sell the chair to the DOD? How many of them was Slade the good guy?