Neve (pronounced Nehve) Maslakovic has created in Felix Sayers, aka Felix A, aka Citizen Sayers, aka 4102A a likable, if hapless, ordinary Joe who lives his taste-limited (he mostly just can taste cheese, chocolate, and nuts) life as a manual writer for kitchen wares products in San Francisco, believing himself to be only the person he is until Great Aunt Henrietta dies, leaving him half her dolphin statuette collection and a photo that proves he's six months older than his birth certificate says he is.
That means Felix has an alter in Universe B. Felix, a citizen of Universe A (the "original" one), is determined to go to Universe B and find out if Felix B has yet written the mystery novel Felix A yearns to author himself. But where do ducks enter into it?
Seldom can you say that a single novel has everything. This one may be an exception. Physics, attempted murder, mystery, romance, travel, literary references, philosophy, and food allergies are all rolled into this delightful and lighthearted romp between two existences. In a way, the book is an alter of the author.
Maslakovic is a native of Belgrade and grew up in the then communist regime in Yugoslavia. She traveled to the US with stops along the way, including London. On the shores of the New World she lighted first in New York, then California, where she earned her Ph.D. in EE from the Stanford STAR Lab. Eventually she found her home in Minneapolis/St. Paul. BTW, her name (Neve) means "Snowy One," befitting a resident of that climatic region.
Felix must contend with a world that is a duplicate but not a perfect replication of his own, much like any emigre must. In Universe A there are no cars, no paper (except for extreme necessities), and no movie theaters; the world is free of trash, the national parks display only their natural wonders, everyone is dedicated to preserving Nature and minimizing their carbon footprints. In Universe B, the trash blows in the San Francisco winds, the books come from trees, and traffic jams are the norm.
By virtue of there being two known worlds, the second being joined to the first so that communication both physically and electronically between them is possible thanks to a known known in the first case -- the Crossing Chamber -- and an unknown known (the author doesn't explain) in the second, it's necessary to have Regulations to protect people's privacy and property and intellectual rights. Hence the Department of Information Management (DIM), which imposes and enforces restrictions that seem intrusive to us and are intrusive to the characters who spend a lot of their time working around and underneath them. The List is 20 items long, governing news, media, citizen privacy, travel, records and documents, alters, pet ownership, identi-card and money, corporate, legislative, judicial, naval, technology, health, education, science, and art aspects of life. DIM sounds as intrusive as communist government.
But a young woman graduate student, Bean Bartholomew, and her team of fellow graduate students at the Bihistory Institute are clever at maneuvering and believe that forgiveness is better to crave than permission convince Felix to help them determine if he is the Prime Mover, the causative agent that caused the Universes to bifurcate that fateful day in January, 1986.
I intend to talk more about the novel in the next diary June 9th. For now, I'll just raise some questions.
1) Who stole Photo #13 from Felix's room at the Medi-Center when he was under quarantine for possible pet bug exposure?
2) How can a company like Past & Future, an "idea incubation" company, operate under the DIM Regulations?
3) What do you think of the scientific idea behind the Crossing Chamber, that physical objects can be reduced to digitized information, disassembled in one place and reassembled in another using borrowed molecules present in the other place?
4) The novel is full of literary allusions to mystery writers and books -- mostly from the Golden Age of that genre -- and philosophical comments about the experience of reading books vs. reading virtual books on one's omni device. Did you find Felix's desire to write "old-fashioned" mystery novels anachronistic, and how did you view Maslakovic's take on the argument of tree vs e-books?
5) What about the physics ideas of chaos theory, event chains, prime movers, and multi-universes -- what is the view of the Pacifists and why do you suppose Maslakovic includes them as a "voice" in her novel?
Five questions should be enough to get the comment ball rolling. Even if these are not your questions. And if they're not, please comment below on any aspect of the novel you wish. And tell us, please whether you read it as an e-book of a tree book -- and if that should make a difference in re this novel.
Here's a sixth question: Just what do ducks have to do with anything? ;^)