[Book] Quantum night (by Robert J. Sawyer): Radical categorization of people

[Book] Quantum night (by Robert J. Sawyer): Radical categorization of people

Title: Quantum night

Author: Robert J. Sawyer

This is a book review about the book I have not read. Right, I didn't read it. I listened to it. 

I borrowed an audiobook from the local library which consists of 10 CDs and listened to it while I was driving. It took about 3 weeks to complete listening. The feeling of listening a story while driving was quite pleasant so I will do it more often.

It's another book of Sawyer. Upto now, I've read 'Flashforward,' 'Mindscan,' 'Wake,' and 'Quantum night' (which I listened to be more exact). And I'm planning to read 'Watch,' and 'Wonder' which are following 'Wake' as parts of WWW Trilogy.

My reviews of Sawyer's other books:

[책] Flashforward - Robert J. Sawyer

[책] Mindscan - Robert J. Sawyer: 뇌 복사 - 로버트 J. 소여

[책] Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (WWW-1): 스스로 생겨난 인공지능

1. Summary

A guy called Jim Marchuk (I'm not sure for the spelling because I've not read it) is the main character. He doesn't have the memory of the first 6 months of 2001. So he's trying to find out what happened to him during that period.

Then he learned that he had a girl friend called Kayla (for the spelling, not sure again). It means the relationship began and ended in six months.

That's not all of course. He was a psychopath during a part of the period. Yes, only for some months in his life. Then he became normal.

While he was tracking down his personal history, he found there was a military project related. And he was a experimental subject. He lost his consciousness as a result of an experiment and changed to be a psychopath. 

Kayla is an excellent researcher of psychology and she found that people can categorized by their quantum entanglement status of the brain. There are only three status: Q1, Q2 and Q3. And Q1 is a group of people who don't have their own thought, Q2 is of psychopaths, and Q3 is of people with consciousness and conscience. In other words, Q1s are PZs (philosophical zombies), Q2s are psychopaths, and Q3s are CWC (consciousness with conscience).

 

In the end, Jim and V (forgot, Vivian or Violet or Victoria?) ran a synchrotron to shift all human beings quantum status twice: Q1 -> Q2 -> Q3, Q2 -> Q3 -> Q1, and Q3 -> Q1 ->Q2. Just because there are some stupid politicians in some powerful countries. 

2. My comments 

It is true that I enjoyed the story. However, it is not as great as Sawyer's other works. Sawyer is my favorite author because his imagination is firmly based on the scientific facts. Consciousness might be related to quantum physics. I have no problem with it. But the problem is to categorize the whole human beings into simple three groups depending on their quantum entangled states. It's not realistic. It is obvious that there must be more sophisticate mechanism in human consciousness. I hardly accept the idea of this radical categorization of people. 

Even though the plot and the story line are enjoyable and very well given, I was a little disappointed. I prefer his other works: Flashforward, Mindscan, and WWW Trilogy.

2 March 2017

gguro