Mar 16

Mar 16 Double Mobius Sphere by P.S. Nim

Ngl, I picked up Double Mobius Sphere because it was on the shorter side; I was looking for an easy win.

I'm not sure why I thought a book titled Double Mobius Sphere would be easy. Mobius spheres are inherently Hard Math™. Double that and things get brain-melty.

But before we get there, the premise: Aliens as we know them, little greenish beings transported by flying saucers, are real, and everything you've seen on Ancient Aliens is true. Thus, aliens—known as Capacians throughout Double Mobius Sphere—must be an elder species of untold wisdom and knowledge.

The setting is several centuries from now, in a federation of most of the lesser sentient species, such as humans. Several years prior, they received direct communication from the Capacians in the form of a coded message. It's proven uncrackable, but it must mean, or signify, or catalyze, something. So this federation sends one of their finest starships, captained by Daniel Oberon and staffed by their very best and brightest, on a multi-year mission to reach the outer rim of the known universe. Here they hope to find the Capacians, and with them, answers to humanity's biggest questions like "why" and "what" and "who."

Finding the Capacians and documenting all he can is not Captain Oberon's most significant task, however. First and foremost, he must keep Elijah Brandon safe.

Elijah is seven years old. He cries when he misses his parents. He slacks off at his school work. He doodles and goes swimming, and loves to play pranks on his caretaker. He's also a genius on a scale impossible to register. The federation has big plans for him; what exactly they are is unknown. Not in a nefarious way, but more in a "he's seven, let's see how things go and find a place for him to shine" sort of way. And "seeing how things go" includes tagging along on this momentous occasion to soak up the knowledge of the unrivaled crew as well as the unique experience of charging into the unknown. Maybe his genius will even make sense of the Capacians.

This voyage to the outer rim takes years. Oberon doesn't seek to uncover that Elijah is far more than what he appears to be. It just comes out, piece by piece, as the doctor performs routine checkups, and crew members make passing comments, and Elijah prattles off stuff that, to him, feels innocuous. But as Oberon begins to understand all that he doesn't understand about Elijah, he has to wonder, is this extraordinary child to humanity's benefit or detriment?

First up, I liked Double Mobius Sphere, but it's a little bit difficult to talk about. This is because, in addition to its mathiness, there's very little ... fluff.

Fluff sounds bad, and sometimes it can be. It can also be those small moments and asides that give the reader time to feel connected to the story-telling or characters but technically don't need to exist for the plot. They are little pockets of fresh air that give you time to breathe.

They simply aren't done here, and that's fine. Double Mobius Sphere is dense, and I doubt P.S. Nim felt particularly strongly about immersion in the world. Ideas are the primary driving force, and these ideas are astronomical, mathematical, philosophical, and, to a lesser extent, anthropological and psychological. Authentic 1970s questions like "how do we know anything?" are trotted out and debated with sincerity alongside quick-ish summaries of how Einstein's work laid a path for subsequent scientists to discover lightspeed travel.

While ideas are the novel's primary goal, paired with Oberon's questions about Elijah, they roll up into a pretty decent mystery. It hit the right beats of questions being answered only to open up more questions, and small reveals stopping you dead in your tracks.

Adding a small human element to the philosophical and psychological is Oberon. His primary task is to keep Elijah safe and find the Capacians, in that order. But as new information comes to light, too far from command for contact, Oberon must make his own decisions, with consequences he can't begin to understand.

All of this works for me, and the characters are perfectly within reason. Elijah could be obnoxious; he's not. The captain feels well-rounded and his less-captain-y insides are drawn out by the ship’s doctor, a good friend of his and a respectable character in his own right. Elijah’s primary caretaker is incredibly sympathetic. There's even a mysterious, intelligent, badass woman that, for some reason, reminds me of The Melaklos from The Panorama Egg fame. The story-telling feels tidy and efficient. If you walk into this expecting an idea book—and a math/science/philosophy heavy one at that—there is so much to like here. It's the sort of book where I wanted to discuss it with someone as soon as I finished it. As it has ten ratings and no reviews on Goodreads, that might not be easy to accomplish. Regardless, it's that good, even if it's far from what I was expecting.

I'm slightly torn about the ending but unsure if I'm being fair or not. I will not give away any significant spoilers, as I feel this book is worth reading, but I have some high-level comments to make after the jump that hint at the ending's theme / tone / etc.

LIGHT SPOILERS START

Okay, so the ending is a little vague and several (many) questions are pointedly not answered.

On the one hand, I kinda get it. It plays into humanity's lesser role in the universe and the general theme of "how much can we know?"

On the other hand, as mentioned, much of this book reads like a mystery, and psychologically I'm primed to expect something concrete before I reach the back cover of a mystery. I don't need to know everything, but at least one big reveal helps a lot. We get small reveals along the way, leading to more questions, but there's nothing too big waiting for us when they run out of questions. There's a, imho, surprisingly touching denouement, and the scene cuts.

I want more. But at the same time, the fact that this hardcore scientific/philosophical book ends on such a human note seems deliberate. Like maybe the answer isn't in the knowing; it's in our relationships with each other.