One part mystery, one part science fiction, and one part realism with a dash of romance and a huge helping of dystopian fiction, 现在 That You’re Here by 艾米K. 尼克尔斯 is a multi-genre novel, one that potentially holds appeal for a wide variety of readers. 它 如果 in many of the intriguing ways that Libba布雷 posed possibilities in 将牛.
以凤凰城为背景, 亚利桑那州, 尼克尔斯 book explores the presence of parallel universes and whether teleportation—universe jumping—may occur via electromagnetism. And who better to perform the research than a couple of teens seeking a science fair project?
Eevee所罗门, a sophomore at Palo Brea High School, likes balance and order in her world, but she also understands that, in chaos theory, even the smallest variance in a system—regardless of its original, ordered complexity—can erupt in unexpected consequences. When her life spins out of control, she grounds herself by drawing 分形. 明确的, 简洁的, and absolute principles in their fractions and geometry return Eevee to a place of calm control.
Eevee needs to find that place of peace when someone hijacks the body of Danny Ogden—someone who looks like—but doesn’t act like—the Danny she knows: a bully and a slacker at school. This “visiting” Danny knows Eevee, 太, but she’s an Eevee from another world, a world in which she is an artist apprentice to Antonio Bosca, not a science-minded girl whose unmarried parents live in separate houses next door to each other and who argue about Eevee’s eating , 阅读, and thinking the wrong things. This Eevee is like a van Eyck painting—“where the closer you look, the more you see. 或者一个 埃舍尔 drawing where, just when you think you’ve got it figured out, the whole thing flips” (54).
In his alternate universe, Danny partners with Germ—Jeremy Bulman. 在一起, they work with an anarchist group called Red December, tagging buildings with anti-establishment messages. Their graffiti art serves as social activism, a protest against the security check points and patrols in a social tracking system called Spectrum that invades one’s privacy and freedoms—a Big Brother gone amok. Danny and Germ were in the middle of painting symbols on the sides of buildings, trying not to get caught, when an EMP blast initiated Danny’s jump.
现在, Danny is caught in another universe, and it’ll take a brainiac like Warren Fletcher to help him get back home. 最初, Warren refuses to help Danny, the bully who traumatized him in elementary school, but the idea that Danny might be the missing link in unified theory, intrigues Warren, who immediately decides Danny might be the new Schrödinger’s Cat and his ticket to a science fair win, an award that will open opportunities to top colleges, 研究实验室, 甚至是NASA. Project DELIVR (Device Engineered to Launch Interuniversal Visitation and Return) will hopefully return “graffiti artist” Danny home and save “bully” Danny from the Hydro tank, a form of torture that involves deprivation and a reprogramming of thought.
In building the 法拉第笼, Warren and Eevee decide they need their science teacher, Marcus McAllister’s help, but Mac seems to be in some kind of strange trouble of his own. 此外, there’s the concern that Danny might respond adversely to the experiment, which is problematic because he’s not a lab rat but a human being, one with whom Eevee is beginning to fall in love.
The science in 尼克尔斯’ book will intrigue readers, as will the novel’s resolution that segues into the next book in the Duplexity series.
- Posted by 唐娜