Neve Maslakovic. Regarding Ducks and Universes. Las Vegas: Amazon Encore, 2011. 340 pages.
I’m back with a fiction review.
REGARDING DUCKS AND UNIVERSES is a clever novel that mashes together science fiction and mystery. Some backstory: in 1986, a scientist duplicated the universe, with Earth A and Earth B gradually diverging because of random chance: in one San Francisco suffers a large earthquake and the automobile is largely a thing of the past by 2020, for example. Travel between the two universes is possible, but it’s complicated by the fact that people born before the separation have “alters,” who are biologically identical but often quite different from their opposite-universe counterpart.
The novel focuses around Felix Sayers, a writer of user guides for kitchen appliances, who discovers that he was actually born about six months earlier than he thought he was, and therefore has a double. Suddenly fearful that his alter will write and publish the mystery novel he’s been kicking around his head for years without putting pen to paper, he decides to head to San Francisco B to investigate. He becomes embroiled in a bigger mystery there, however, than he could ever have expected.
It’s a fun novel, with a universe (or, more accurately, two of them) with enough surprises to keep the reader interesting. Even before the 1986 divergence, this is clearly not the universe we live in–the Gold Rush took place in 1855, not 1849, and the Golden Gate bridge is a drawbridge.
Maslakovic has a good sense for world-building, with enough stuff going on around the boundaries of the story to give the reader a sense that she’s created a complex universe(s) with plenty of room for more adventures for Felix. I’m looking forward to reading more of them.