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Shadow World
McEvoy is a truth-seeker. He has moments when he sees through the surface sheen of the world to a deeper reality, and moments when his sense of self dissolves. The Scotsman is restless, a wanderer. He flings himself into new relationships, even as he flees family secrets. In Shadow World, we see through McEvoy’s eyes as he grows from boisterous youth to a man defined equally by darkness and light. We meet his demons and his lovers. His adventure unfolds like beads on a string, with each episode separate yet connected. His journey takes him from the Arizona desert to the wilds of Patagonia, from the Silk Road in China to the lush countryside of Ireland, ending in a twilight zone near the Arctic Circle. Shadow World is a first novel by noted popular science writer Chris Impey. Shadow World inhabits the boundary between narrative fiction and science fiction. It explores the tension between artifacts and natural forms, between reality and illusion, between the science that is and the science that might be. The novel is filled with intriguing characters. We meet a death camp survivor for whom music is everything, a relentless archeologist who is rewriting the story of human civilization, a mercurial sculptor who has a personality that mirrors her art, identical twins who inhabit parallel worlds of science and religion, a brilliant but raunchy astrophysicist, and an enigmatic philosopher who seems to know McEvoy better than he knows himself. By the end of his twenty-year odyssey, McEvoy has gained a startling insight into his reality, and perhaps ours as well.
- GenresFictionScience Fiction
328 pages, Paperback
First published October 24, 2013
12 people are currently reading
824 people want to read
About the author
Chris Impey
26 books144 followersChris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor in the Astronomy Department and Associate Dean in the College of Science at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He has written popular articles on astronomy and is the author of a number of popular science books. The Living Cosmos is a tour of the search for life in the universe, and the pair of books How It Ends and How It Began cover the origin and fate of everything in the universe. Talking About Life is a series of conversations with pioneers in astrobiology. With Holly Henry, he wrote about the scientific and cultural impact of a dozen iconic NASA missions, Dreams of Other Worlds. A book about his experiences teaching cosmology to Tibetan monks, Humble Before the Void was published in 2014, and his book about the future of humans in space, called Beyond, was published in 2015. His first novel is called Shadow World.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 16, 2014
To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about SHADOW WORLD. Science writer Chris Impey, in his first novel, has given me a lot to think about.
It's twenty years in the life of a Scot named Ian McEvoy, just McEvoy to everyone he knows. Told in a series of tales, seven, he's nineteen when the book opens and approaching middle age in the last segment.
McEvoy meets a host of characters in his world travels, lovers, friends, guides. He's a seeker.
The tales seem to end unresolved, a fact that bothered me early on. But I could not stop reading. Never dull, I moved from one to the other. learning things along with our hero.
it all comes together at the end in things I never saw coming.
Highly recommended.
It's twenty years in the life of a Scot named Ian McEvoy, just McEvoy to everyone he knows. Told in a series of tales, seven, he's nineteen when the book opens and approaching middle age in the last segment.
McEvoy meets a host of characters in his world travels, lovers, friends, guides. He's a seeker.
The tales seem to end unresolved, a fact that bothered me early on. But I could not stop reading. Never dull, I moved from one to the other. learning things along with our hero.
it all comes together at the end in things I never saw coming.
Highly recommended.
October 21, 2025
Odd book. I think I liked it. Unclear really.
August 10, 2019
In part a realistic variation on “The Matrix” theme
I know that Chris Impey (Professor of astronomy and cosmology at the University of Arizona, by the way) had a lot of fun writing this novel because it was so much fun to read. He explains how and why he wrote it in the Preface: …twenty-five hundred words a day, twenty-eight chapters; basically just write and don’t look back; put it in a drawer for six years and then take another look; and then edit. I used to write like that. I think I did some of my best fiction just winging it on a daily basis and letting my imagination carry me.
The shadow in the title is an allusion to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in which prisoners from birth see only the shadows of things and therefore believe that the shadows are reality. But on a deeper level Professor Impey’s novel explores in a psychologically compelling way what it would seem like to really live in a world in which we are all just simulations produced by some superior intelligence. There would be incongruities, gaps between events, memories lost and some kind of inexplicable strangeness in how life unfolds. What I found most interesting in Impey’s treatment is the subtle way in which we are gradually drawn into this world and the realization that something is not quite right. The sophisticated reader may realize that the protagonist’s memory problems are software glitches or something similar. Everything is not quite as it seems.
The novel begins in the southwestern desert of the United States as Impey’s hero, Scotsman Ian McEvoy, who is 19-years-old, meets Night Owl, a Native American desert guide and mystic. This is about the Native Americans of the Southwest, the Hopi and their ways. Part of this is a short course in a way of life that is mostly gone. This is an adoration of Canyon country. It is vivid and atmospheric including a Mormon named “Jessop” and a naturally air-conditioned Hopi building. Here’s a bit of the first person narrative as McEvoy tries to fathom his guide, Night Owl:
“’Are we lost?’ ‘No.’ He looks around like he’s in an unfamiliar place. ‘But we are very close to the underworld. The energy unsettles me.’ I try to feel what he’s feeling but can’t. No doubt my finer senses are dulled by lifelong ingestion of sugar and fried food.”
Note, incidentally, that McEvoy doesn’t recall how he got there.
This is adventure number one. Six more follow. In each of the adventures there is danger and a mesmerizing woman with whom McEvoy becomes intimately entangled, or perhaps just tantalized. Most of the adventures involve McEvoy in something either rigorously scientific such as an archaeological dig or something cultural such as a tour with a controversial (and beautiful!) female artist. McEvoy’s personality is apparently quite winning and his skills impressive despite his lack of formal education since people keep inviting him to join them in what it is they are doing. McEvoy is a two-fisted hero when he needs to be and a passionate lover of not only women but of knowledge. He is my kind of hero.
A nice feature is the scientific discussions that McEvoy has with the scientists he meets in his adventures. Since Professor Impey is the author of a number of popular scientific books you can be sure that the science is real. Another nice feature is the sharp, witty dialogue.
Strange to say as I was reading this I became more and more estranged from the earlier chapters, so much so that I actually read the first chapter again. I think this had something to do with my identification with Impey’s hero.
Another way to look at this novel and interpret it is to imagine that McEvoy, a denizen of the future, has been given a choice of virtual realities in which to live. He has many choices as everyone has. This is the one he has chosen. It is not just a life of pure pleasure but a life of adventure and challenges and a life that is seemingly worth living in which the high points and the good experiences outnumber the bad.
—Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
I know that Chris Impey (Professor of astronomy and cosmology at the University of Arizona, by the way) had a lot of fun writing this novel because it was so much fun to read. He explains how and why he wrote it in the Preface: …twenty-five hundred words a day, twenty-eight chapters; basically just write and don’t look back; put it in a drawer for six years and then take another look; and then edit. I used to write like that. I think I did some of my best fiction just winging it on a daily basis and letting my imagination carry me.
The shadow in the title is an allusion to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in which prisoners from birth see only the shadows of things and therefore believe that the shadows are reality. But on a deeper level Professor Impey’s novel explores in a psychologically compelling way what it would seem like to really live in a world in which we are all just simulations produced by some superior intelligence. There would be incongruities, gaps between events, memories lost and some kind of inexplicable strangeness in how life unfolds. What I found most interesting in Impey’s treatment is the subtle way in which we are gradually drawn into this world and the realization that something is not quite right. The sophisticated reader may realize that the protagonist’s memory problems are software glitches or something similar. Everything is not quite as it seems.
The novel begins in the southwestern desert of the United States as Impey’s hero, Scotsman Ian McEvoy, who is 19-years-old, meets Night Owl, a Native American desert guide and mystic. This is about the Native Americans of the Southwest, the Hopi and their ways. Part of this is a short course in a way of life that is mostly gone. This is an adoration of Canyon country. It is vivid and atmospheric including a Mormon named “Jessop” and a naturally air-conditioned Hopi building. Here’s a bit of the first person narrative as McEvoy tries to fathom his guide, Night Owl:
“’Are we lost?’ ‘No.’ He looks around like he’s in an unfamiliar place. ‘But we are very close to the underworld. The energy unsettles me.’ I try to feel what he’s feeling but can’t. No doubt my finer senses are dulled by lifelong ingestion of sugar and fried food.”
Note, incidentally, that McEvoy doesn’t recall how he got there.
This is adventure number one. Six more follow. In each of the adventures there is danger and a mesmerizing woman with whom McEvoy becomes intimately entangled, or perhaps just tantalized. Most of the adventures involve McEvoy in something either rigorously scientific such as an archaeological dig or something cultural such as a tour with a controversial (and beautiful!) female artist. McEvoy’s personality is apparently quite winning and his skills impressive despite his lack of formal education since people keep inviting him to join them in what it is they are doing. McEvoy is a two-fisted hero when he needs to be and a passionate lover of not only women but of knowledge. He is my kind of hero.
A nice feature is the scientific discussions that McEvoy has with the scientists he meets in his adventures. Since Professor Impey is the author of a number of popular scientific books you can be sure that the science is real. Another nice feature is the sharp, witty dialogue.
Strange to say as I was reading this I became more and more estranged from the earlier chapters, so much so that I actually read the first chapter again. I think this had something to do with my identification with Impey’s hero.
Another way to look at this novel and interpret it is to imagine that McEvoy, a denizen of the future, has been given a choice of virtual realities in which to live. He has many choices as everyone has. This is the one he has chosen. It is not just a life of pure pleasure but a life of adventure and challenges and a life that is seemingly worth living in which the high points and the good experiences outnumber the bad.
—Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
March 12, 2025
Written by the instructor for U of A's excellent free online "Introduction to Astronomy" class on Cousera, and author of numerous popular astronomy books, I was very curious about his first fictional novel. (I think I may be the first reader of my local library's copy.) It was a fun, quick read, with an engaging central character and a variety of adventures. It is satisfyingly thought-provoking (as hoped for) -- and surprisingly racy. (Not for children.) Still needs a revision to clean up various missing words, etc, but that does not detract much from the first edition.
April 9, 2023
I must admit that I don’t understand the story as related in this book. There’s something about it that kept me reading it anyway. It seems to suggest that our lives as we live them are just computer simulations of a more intelligent civilization. Beyond that, I did not extract any further wisdom from this book. I cannot honestly recommend this book, though perhaps you can grasp it better than I did.
September 23, 2020
Surprising
Chris Impey writes with sound knowledge of Astro physics and also with great imagination and strong characterisation. A good read.
Chris Impey writes with sound knowledge of Astro physics and also with great imagination and strong characterisation. A good read.
July 18, 2014
I thoroughly enjoyed every moment spent reading Shadow World. Once I recognized it was not written in the usual style but as a series of vignettes, each of which revealed more aspects McAvoy's character, I became thoroughly immersed.
The science knowledge of the author exquisitely supplements the story with the little details that bring a story to life. Each section dealt with a different field of science and although the events may be fictional, the science is real. 5/5
The science knowledge of the author exquisitely supplements the story with the little details that bring a story to life. Each section dealt with a different field of science and although the events may be fictional, the science is real. 5/5
September 3, 2015
This is a tough one to review. It is certainly a wild ride. And for anyone who starts this one, keep going, there is a pay off. I almost gave up on this one and I don't quit easily on a book.
Dr. Impey is a gifted writer and the wealth of his broad knowledge shines through in this one but it takes time to reveal itself.
Dr. Impey is a gifted writer and the wealth of his broad knowledge shines through in this one but it takes time to reveal itself.
June 27, 2014
Different. But in a good way, something that I am not used to reading and it's nice to be pushed away from a comfort genre. I enjoyed this, a nice 'easy-read' which wasn't to hard or tiring that some books can be. Put down but immediately picked up again.
:)
:)
January 18, 2015
Had trouble getting in to this book.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews