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The Best Version?
Apr. 11th, 2018 10:40 pmMar 2017
Life after Life - Kate Atkinson - Black Swan, 2013
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Uh oh, another mainstream writer has decided to write a book based on a science fiction idea. To be fair, however, it is a relatively unused one - Hugh Everett's many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. SF writers have, of course, been playing with this idea for years - however, I am hard pressed to think of a classic SF novel that specifically uses parallel versions of its characters in any meaningful way (by contrast, genre TV and movies from Star Trek's mirror universe onwards have used them so much that they are now cliche). So all credit to Kate Atkinson for at least giving the idea a go. But I wish she hadn't used it as the basis for what turns out to be yet another dreary novel about the Blitz.
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