Entanglement

by Douglas Thompson

In 2180, travel to neighbouring star systems has been mastered thanks to quantum teleportation using the ‘entanglement’ of sub-atomic matter; astronauts on earth can be duplicated on a remote world once the dupliport chamber has arrived there. In this way a variety of worlds can be explored, but what humanity discovers is both surprising and disturbing, enlightening and shocking. Each alternative to mankind that the astronauts find, sheds light on human shortcomings and potential while offering fresh perspectives of life on Earth. Meanwhile, at home, the lives of the astronauts and those in charge of the missions will never be the same again.

Best described as philosophical science fiction, Entanglement explores our assumptions about such constants as death, birth, sex and conflict, as the characters in the story explore distant worlds and the intelligent life that lives there. It is simultaneously a novel and a series of short stories: multiple worlds, each explored in a separate chapter, a separate story; every one another step on mankind’s journey outwards to the stars and inwards to our own psyche. Yet the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts; the synergy of the episodes results in an overarching story arc that ultimately tells us more about ourselves than about the rest of the universe.

338 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 31, 2012

About the author

Douglas Thompson's short stories have appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, most recently Ambit, Postscripts, and New Writing Scotland. He won the Grolsch/Herald Question of Style Award in 1989 and second prize in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition in 2007. His first book, "Ultrameta", was published by Eibonvale Press in August 2009, nominated for the Edge Hill Prize, and shortlisted for the BFS Best Newcomer Award. His critically acclaimed second novel, "Sylvow", was published in autumn 2010, also from Eibonvale. A third novel "Apoidea" was released from The Exaggerated Press in 2011, a fourth "Mechagnosis" is due from Dog Horn in September 2012, and a fifth "Entanglement" is due from Elsewhen Press as an e-book from August 2012, and as a paperback from November 2012,

Reviews

[Seregil of Rhiminee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published at Risingshadow.

Douglas Thompson's Entanglement has an interesting and unconventional structure. It's a science fiction novel which consists of 24 clever and interlinking short stories. Each story can be read separately, but in order to fully appreciate the story arc, the readers must read the whole novel.

The events of Entanglement take place in the future. Mankind has invented how to travel to far away planets by the use of quantum teleportation. Chambers of quantum-entangled sub-atomic matter are sent to neighbouring star systems and their twins remain on Earth. This technology allows mankind to visit other planets and find out more about their environments and inhabitants.

Entanglement contains the following stories:
- Entanglement
- Dissemblance
- In Time Like Glass
- The Fruitless Ones
- Meralis
- Profile
- A Trip to the Zoo
- Centauri
- Investigations
- Disentanglement
- Escaladore
- The Jugle of Eyes
- Chan's Leg
- Virago
- The Cheap Gods
- Ursa Major
- Severance
- Relativity
- The Translucent Sky
- Revelation
- Diamondis
- Aviáriss
- Two Miles Down
- Booked

Some of the readers may recognize the first story, Entanglement, because it was published in the anthology Where Are We Going? (Eibonvale Press, edited by Allen Ashley). Some other stories have also been published before, but most of the stories are new and never-before-published stories.

Entanglement is an excellent and fascinating science fiction novel, because Douglas Thompson explores several things from sex to violence and from human feelings to advanced technology. Entanglement is philosophical science fiction, because the author writes about the happenings in a deep and thoughtful way. He shows his readers what may happen when we meet intelligent lifeforms and what kind of an effect they may have on us.

Douglas Thompson explores what it means to be human in a fascinating way, because meeting aliens makes us question our way of life and our cultural norms and values. He writes observingly and thoughtfully about alien lifeforms, human errors, feelings and technological advancement. When we meet new lifeforms, we instantly try to compare them to us and notice how different they are, but we also become fascinated by their strangeness. This kind of thoughtful writing raises many questions, because it's interesting to think about how we may act when we meet intelligent lifeforms.

Douglas Thompson manages to surprise his readers with this book, because it features cultural differences, alien biology, alien sex etc. The author has used lots of imagination when he has created different alien races and their worlds. He describes each planet and each race with vivid details.

I have to admit that I was positively surprised by how imaginatively, but believably the author wrote about the planets and their wonders. The readers have a chance to read about how intelligent lifeforms can be found in strange and unexpected places and how they have adapted to different conditions (life exists even in the most uncommon places). The comments and observations of the explorers are interesting, because they reveal quite a lot about the planets and their lifeforms.

The explorers find out that everything's possible when you travel to distant planets, because life is different in far away places. The author writes about several different alien races, underwater cities, hostile places etc in a fascinating way. The aliens are different from each other and they behave differently toward visitors - some of them are friendly, but others can be hostile. The things the explorers see are often surprising, because they aren't used to seeing certain things. Certain things are disturbing and the explorers find out that visiting planets can be dangerous.

The author writes about sex in a fascinatingly scientific way, because alien sex seems strange to us. For example, the mating ritual of the inhabitants of Meralis is fascinating, because during the act the male swallows the female.

Reading about the communication and translation technology is also fascinating, because the explorers use new technology and software to communicate with intelligent lifeforms. The communication with these lifeforms is at times a bit slow, but mostly successful and the explorers have a chance to talk and exchange thoughts with the aliens.

I was impressed by the richness of the descriptions of technological advancement and problems concerning early technology. The author writes captivatingly about technological things (and what's best, he doesn't overexplain them). He also shows how badly things went wrong during the early dupliportation experiments when one man, Guy Lecoux, became tragically "lost in the system". This was very interesting to me, because tragic accidents are sometimes left unexplained or the authors simply refer to them, but don't mention more about them.

What I liked most about this book was that Douglas Thompson had courage to write about the different aspects of space travelling (technology, exploration, the risks of exploring strange places etc). The author writes as fluently about the feelings of the characters as about the happenings, which is nice and rewarding. He writes accurately, but imaginatively about the characters and their fates. Space exploration has its own risks and the author shows the readers what may happen to explorers. The characters may find themselves in trouble, they may suddenly suffer from mental illness which makes their actions unpredictable or they may become intrigued by the alien way of life.

I enjoyed reading about the different planets and the customs and cultures of their inhabitants. It was interesting to read how aliens felt about humans and how their cultures and habits differed from ours. For example, the inhabitants of one planet lose their memory by regular intervals and the explorers begin to think what it would be like to live in an amnesiac society. This is an interesting idea and it allows the author to question several things which make us human.

Although this novel is full of philosophical and scientific speculation, some of the stories contain plenty of adventure elements. For example, "A Trip to the Zoo" contains easily recognizable space adventure elements. (These adventure elements reminded me a bit of old pulp adventures.)

There's also a bit of quirky humour in this novel. It was fun to read about what Hazel Vesberg did to her husband in one of the stories, because it was an unexpected thing.

Entanglement is one of the most fascinating science fiction novels I've read, because Douglas Thompson manages to bring space exploration to life with his 24 stories. He has found a good balance between the stories, because he writes captivatingly about what happens on Earth and what happens on the distant planets. Each story adds depth to the story arc and reveals more about us and the unirverse that surrounds us.

In my opinion Douglas Thompson is a talented science fiction author. What separates him from other authors is that he's clearly more willing to take risks than several other authors and isn't afraid to explore difficult subjects. In other words, he's willing to write about unconventional things.

I've read a couple of novels by Douglas Thompson and I enjoyed them, but I can say that Entanglement is his best novel so far. Sylvow and Apoidea were well written, exciting and unconventional science fiction novels, but Entanglement surpasses them, because the author seems to able to write about almost anything in it. Entanglement is a great achievement.

Entanglement will be an interesting reading experience for fans of Douglas Thompson, but it can also be recommended to newcomers, who aren't familiar with Douglas Thompson's stories. I think that everybody who likes quality science fiction will enjoy this novel.

Highly recommended!

[Victoria Hooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Douglas Thompson has written stories for past issues of a magazine that I've been editor for, including 'Dissemblance', which appears in this collection. So naturally, when he asked if I'd like to review this book, I was intrigued! Quick disclaimer: I had nothing to do with the editing or publishing of Entanglement, and was not required to write a positive review.

Entanglement is a collection of short stories that are all part of one larger story, centred around the invention of Dupliportation technology, which has finally allowed humans to walk on other planets. This means that the book is an interesting blend of short story and novel, as the stories, though many of them could stand alone, really must be read in order and are all part of the larger story. I’ve only read one other thing that’s sort of similar, Asimov’s Foundation series, but those stories were separated by long periods of time and so this book has quite a different feel. It’s very interesting, and the stories are all fairly short and quick reads. I raced through, and really enjoyed it.

Dupliportation technology is influenced by the ansible from Ursula Le Guin’s fiction (I love Le Guin’s stories, and it was nice to see her actually mentioned by the characters in this book), and, as suggested by the book’s title, by real science: quantum entanglement. A very simplified explanation: the technology is sent through space to another world, where doubles of the human explorers are created. The consciousness of the explorers is then transferred to these doubles while the original bodies sleep on Earth. This is a fascinating method of visiting other planets, which I haven’t seen done in science fiction before. Because the explorers sleep and then enter another world, it’s strongly linked to dreaming, and the theme of dreams runs throughout the whole collection. In fact, the stories themselves often have something of a dream-like quality, which really suits the book.

I found most of the stories fun and interesting, with a good mix of tense, thoughtful, dreamy, funny and absurd. A book like this couldn’t have worked if the author had taken things too seriously, but thankfully Douglas Thompson gives us changes of tone, style and pacing when needed. The technology aspects are written well and not bogged down with too much explanation, and the science and more fantastical elements mix very naturally. The characters on Earth tend to be more interesting than the actual explorers, who are really just there to observe and report. Some of the stories worked less well for me than others, with one or two that were a bit forgettable, but most have really stayed with me. I also found a lot of the linking stories to be very compelling, particularly anything involving Guy Lecoux.

Many of the stories have quite a classic sci-fi feel, something like Ray Bradbury stories, which felt a little odd at first, a kind of mix of nostalgic and new. I thought this worked in some places and not in others. There is a very exploratory feel to the collection, which science fiction doesn’t tend to do so much these days, and the humans have quite an astonishingly gung-ho attitude in some parts. Where these stories differed from classic sci-fi was in their more cynical outlook; humans walking on other worlds would be an incredible and uplifting thing, but also hugely destructive to both humans and aliens. In these stories, the humans find that they are not necessarily as intelligent or morally superior as we often like to believe that we are. Even though rules are put in place to try to prevent too much interference, the human explorers still manage to cause plenty of harm in their blundering about and their assumptions about intelligent life. I really liked this aspect of the book.

What worked less well for me was Earth itself, which felt a bit old-fashioned with an almost 50s feel, though I can’t quite put my finger on why this was. Perhaps the attitudes, perhaps the characters coming almost exclusively from neat, traditional family units, perhaps something else. The alien worlds also seemed a little too similar to old Earth societies sometimes, with in most cases one leader, and often some form of hierarchy. At the very end of the book, we get an answer as to why Earth may have seemed this way, and why the aliens were limited by human experience. This last story provides a twist that might be frustrating in any other novel, but actually works very well for this book and added a new element to the stories, changing everything.

This is a clever book, packed with ideas, and I loved the idea of linking short stories with the same technology. The book asks some fascinating questions about dream and reality, intelligence, and how humans view their world. As ‘philosophical science fiction’, I think it works very well. I particularly enjoyed getting to know recurring characters over the course of the collection, and found the stories to be memorable and absorbing.

Thank you to the author for providing a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This review also appears on my blog.

[Richard Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title refers to humankind's mastery of quantum teleportation, the 'entanglement' of sub-atomic matter that allows astronauts from 2180AD to instantaneously travel to distant planets. This is the founding principle of the book, which might be classified as 'metaphysical' sci-fi, in two senses: firstly, the literal projection of astronauts to explore far-off worlds whilst their 'other selves' remain cocooned in stasis on Earth, and secondly in the sense of the philosophical exploration of discovered worlds: interacting with intelligent species that challenge our notions of birth, life, sex, culture, community, death and belief by showing alternatives that are…well, 'alien'.

Whilst a novel it reads almost as a series of interlinked short stories, with each chapter giving an insight into a new planet, interspersed with glimpses into the lives of the scientists who operate as mission controllers. The effect is episodic, a deliberate fragmentation only held together by a loose synergy, with each planet providing its unique perspective before the narrative moves on, never to return to. This reflects the fact that after a brief stay, the astronauts leave (though some encounter different fates), and humankind knows a little bit more but the explorations progress, without really processing and understanding what has been uncovered.

But the side effect of this is an emotional fragmentation for the reader: it is difficult to feel connected to any of the characters, some of which undergo emotional fragmentations of their own. But as astronauts pass before us as little more than names, their trial and tribulations have little resonance. Perhaps this too is deliberate: we, like the mission controllers, are observers.

This is reinforced by a dispassionate narrative style and passiveness of voice that distances the reader; even the personal human dramas taking place on Earth seem as distant as the stars. Contemplating space does this: it dissipates the emotions, trivializing that which is heartfelt. This depersonalization is a deft accomplishment on the one hand but a risk on the other, the opposite of the author mantra: 'engage with your characters'. Here the disengagement creates too much distance for some readers to want to overcome.

It is a book of the mind rather than the heart, one that enquires rather than arouses. In showing us alien forms, Thompson illuminates human assumptions and limitations whilst offering fresh perspectives on our lives.

Eventually however, the chapters tended toward the formulaic: another new planet, another alien race and another weird happening. It was less fascinating once 'weird' became usual; the book already asks for a galactic-scale leap of faith in its premise, and the descent towards absurdity in some chapters asks too much. At times it had the feel of 'just popping down' to a planet millions of light years away, in the style of pulp-era sci-fi before harder science dulled the glimmer of fantasy in the genre; that said, several of these new worlds are a pleasure to discover.

If you prefer space travel to show close encounters that are cerebral rather than visceral, prepare to be entangled.