Quantum Night

Quantum Night

Quantum Night by Robert J. Sawyer
Author	Robert J. Sawyer
Language	English
Genre	science-fiction
Published	Ace (March 1, 2016)
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
ISBN	9780425256831

Quantum Night is a science-fiction thriller novel written by Canadian novelist Robert J. Sawyer and published in 2016. Set in the near future, the book touches on themes of quantum physics, psychology, current politics and ethics.

Plot

Jim Marchuk, an experimental psychologist has developed a technique for detecting psychopaths. While delivering testimony in a court case he is shocked to discover he is missing six months of memory from his life twenty years ago. As Jim begins to reconstruct his past, he reunites with Kayla Huron, his girlfriend from his lost period and now a quantum physicist. Huron has also made a discovery about human consciousness. As violence and hate sweep across the globe, the two scientists unite to see if they can "fix" human nature before the world pulls itself apart.

Major themes

Robert J. Sawyer keeps an updated list of all of his works and groups them among recurring themes. He self-identified Quantum Night as containing the following themes: the nature of consciousness, biology determining psychology, Canada, courtroom drama, parent-child relationships, psychotherapy/counseling/psychological testing, modern physics and the nature of reality.^[1]

Development history

In an interview with SFFWorld, Sawyer described how he wrote the book. When asked if the characters or the story came first, Sawyer said, "Neither. I'm a thematically driven writer; I figure out what I want to say first and then devise the storyline and a cast of characters that will let me most effectively say it." The theme that drives Quantum Night is "the most pernicious lie humanity has ever told itself is that you can't change human nature." In the same interview Sawyer said, "I wanted to open people's eyes and have them look critically at social forces sweeping around them."^[2]

Sawyer includes a list of fifty-one non-fiction books in the back of the novel which he consulted while writing the novel. Books, articles and authors referenced.

Consciousness and quantum mechanics:

• The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of by Physics by Sir Roger Penrose
• Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the missing Science of Consciousness by Sir Roger Penrose
• Consciousness in the Universe: A Review of the 'Orch OR' Theory by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose

Philosopher's zombies:

• The Conscious Mind: In Search of Fundamental Theory by David J. Chalmers
• Life on the Edge: The Coming Age of Quantum Biology by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili
• The Character of Consciousness by David J. Chalmers
• The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer

Complex behavior:

• Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life by Charles Duhigg
• Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer
• The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity by Bruce Hood
• Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist by Christof Koch
• Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman
• The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, And Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making and Getting Things Done by Peter Miller
• Psychonomics: How Modern Science Aims to Conquer the Mind and How the Mind Prevails by Eric Robert Morse
• Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind by Mark Pagel
• Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread by Alex Pentland
• Autopilot: The Art and Science of Doing Nothing by Andrew Smart
• The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
• The Social Conquest of the World by Edward O. Wilson
• Mirroring People: The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others by Marco Iacoboni
• The Myth of Mirror Neurons by Gregory Hickock

Psychopaths

• The Mask of Sanity by Hervey Cleckley
• Without Conscious: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare
• The Psychopathic Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience by Kent Kiehl
• The Psychopathic Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
• Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work by Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare
• The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout
• The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success by Kevin Dutton
• The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain by James Fallon
• Women Who Love Psychopaths by Sandra L. Brown

Milgram experiment:

• Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram
• The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram by Thomas Blass
• Behind the Shock Machine: the Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments by Gina Perry

Stanford Prison Guard Experiment:

• The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo
• Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt

Human Evil:

• Hitler's Charisma by Laurence Rees
• Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean
• Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty by Roy F. Baumeister
• The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen
• Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil by Paul Bloom

Utilitarianism:

• Practical Ethics, Third Edition by Peter Singer
• Writings on an Ethical Life by Peter Singer
• The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty by Peter Singer
• Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals by Peter Singer
• Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua Greene

Ethics and Free Will

• The Trolley Problem: Or Would You Throw the Fat Guy Off the Bridge? by Thomas Cathcart
• Brain Trust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality by Patricia S. Churchland
• Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain by Michael Gazzaniga
• Free Will by Sam Harris
• The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall
• Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature by John D. Niles

Scientific basis for creation of literature and art:

• Mimesis and the Human Animal: On the Biogenetic Foundations of Literary Representation by Robert Storey

Publication history

2015, US, Ace ISBN 9780425256831, 1 March 2016, Hardcover

Explanation of the novel's title

The title refers to "it's always darkest before the dawn." Sawyer wanted to write a book that addressed the dark side of human nature and the negative forces and outright evil in the world today and he wanted the title to reflect that.^[2]

Reception

Quantum Night has received positive reviews. Publishers Weekly called it a "fast-moving, mind-stretching exploration of the nature of personality and consciousness."^[3] Winnipeg Free Press described the book "a breath of fresh air and a return to classic Sawyer: big ideas, relatable people and a Canadian perspective."^[4]

References