In Universes

240 pages

English language

Published Aug. 8, 2024 by Cornerstone Publishing.

ISBN:: 9781529153590

(2 reviews)

For fans of Emily St. John Mandel and Kelly Link, a profoundly imaginative debut novel set in numerous universes, which follows a queer physicist’s search for belonging across time and space.

Raffi works in an observational cosmology lab, searching for dark matter and trying to hide how little they understand their own research. Every chance they get, they escape to see Britt, a queer sculptor who fascinates them for reasons they also don’t — or won’t — understand. As Raffi’s carefully constructed life begins to collapse, they become increasingly fixated on the multiverse and the idea that somewhere, there might be a universe where they mean as much to Britt as she does to them…and just like that, Raffi and Britt are thirteen years old, best friends and maybe something more…

A meditation on self-destruction and reconstruction, In Universes is a mind-bending tour across parallel worlds, each an answer to …

For fans of Emily St. John Mandel and Kelly Link, a profoundly imaginative debut novel set in numerous universes, which follows a queer physicist’s search for belonging across time and space.

Raffi works in an observational cosmology lab, searching for dark matter and trying to hide how little they understand their own research. Every chance they get, they escape to see Britt, a queer sculptor who fascinates them for reasons they also don’t — or won’t — understand. As Raffi’s carefully constructed life begins to collapse, they become increasingly fixated on the multiverse and the idea that somewhere, there might be a universe where they mean as much to Britt as she does to them…and just like that, Raffi and Britt are thirteen years old, best friends and maybe something more…

A meditation on self-destruction and reconstruction, In Universes is a mind-bending tour across parallel worlds, each an answer to the question of what Raffi’s life would be like if they had made slightly different choices. The universes grow increasingly strange as Raffi flees the ever-present specter of guilt: women fracture into hordes of animals; alien-possessed bears prowl apocalyptic landscapes. But across worlds, Raffi—with their sometimes-friends, sometimes-lovers Britt, Kay, and Graham—reaches for a life that feels authentically their own.

Blending realism with science fiction, In Universes explores the thirst for genius, the fluidity of gender and identity, and the pull of despair against the desire to lead a meaningful life, insisting on the transgressive power of hope even in the darkest of times.

2 editions

enne📚 reviewed In Universes by Emet North

5 stars

Incredible.

We've read a number of books for #SFFBookClub that have a short story structure with interconnecting themes and worldbuilding (How High We Go in the Dark, and Under the Eye of the Big Bird) but In Universes is my clear favorite among all of these.

Structurally, this book is a series of short stories with a single point of view. Each story takes place in a different adjacent-ish branching multiverses, some of which veer into more magical realism and externalized metaphors while others are more realistic. Thematically, this book is about dealing with internalized homophobia, trauma, depression and grief. But it's also about (queer) possibility and transformation and acceptance.

It's interesting to me just how many things I underlined (virtually) while reading this book. Delicious turns of phrase. Devastating sentences seemingly directly targeted at my feelings. Interconnecting thematic ideas everywhere. I found myself utterly engaged in …

Incredible.

We've read a number of books for #SFFBookClub that have a short story structure with interconnecting themes and worldbuilding (How High We Go in the Dark, and Under the Eye of the Big Bird) but In Universes is my clear favorite among all of these.

Structurally, this book is a series of short stories with a single point of view. Each story takes place in a different adjacent-ish branching multiverses, some of which veer into more magical realism and externalized metaphors while others are more realistic. Thematically, this book is about dealing with internalized homophobia, trauma, depression and grief. But it's also about (queer) possibility and transformation and acceptance.

It's interesting to me just how many things I underlined (virtually) while reading this book. Delicious turns of phrase. Devastating sentences seemingly directly targeted at my feelings. Interconnecting thematic ideas everywhere. I found myself utterly engaged in its writing and imagery.

What is most striking about In Universes is that even when some chapters veer off in fantastical directions ("my mother is a horde of bees", "I am pregnant with an octopus", horse telepathy), there is such a coherent emotional progression for Raffi across the entire book. A lot of similarly structured books suffer from meandering too far afield with their ideas that they fail to come together, but In Universes feels so intentional with how it deploys its imagery and pacing. If anything, the final part of the book, consisting of a single chapter, resonates the strongest of all of them and I love the way it reprises the previous stories to bring everything together.

el dang reviewed In Universes by Emet North

A fascinating fractal

5 stars

This is the book version of the theme-and-variations composition structure used in classical music and sometimes techno. The first chapter is a lovely and sad story in its own right; it almost feels like what Chekhov might have come up with if he'd been writing with today's gender and sexuality sensibility. Each thereafter takes mostly the same set of characters but with progressively larger twists - at first it's very much "what if protagonist had made a different choice at this key moment?", but it gradually shades over into wilder sci-fi speculations.

Strangely, it was the wilder variations that really made the book click for me. Before things got really weird I was starting to question how the book was going to sustain interest for 11 chapters, but North answered that question very effectively. I don't think it would have worked to go directly to those, the smaller variations feel …

This is the book version of the theme-and-variations composition structure used in classical music and sometimes techno. The first chapter is a lovely and sad story in its own right; it almost feels like what Chekhov might have come up with if he'd been writing with today's gender and sexuality sensibility. Each thereafter takes mostly the same set of characters but with progressively larger twists - at first it's very much "what if protagonist had made a different choice at this key moment?", but it gradually shades over into wilder sci-fi speculations.

Strangely, it was the wilder variations that really made the book click for me. Before things got really weird I was starting to question how the book was going to sustain interest for 11 chapters, but North answered that question very effectively. I don't think it would have worked to go directly to those, the smaller variations feel needed for the coherency of the whole, but I loved the effect of the whole set together.

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