The Coming of the Quantum Cats: A Novel of Alternate Universes by Frederik Pohl

The Coming of the Quantum Cats: A Novel of Alternate Universes Reviews

• 
  Kevin Kuhn

  I haven’t read any Frederik Pohl, which is a little embarrassing as he won several Nebulas, a Hugo, and the National Book Award. SFWA named him as their 12th Grand Master and placed him in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1998. He passed away in 2013.
  
  I’m not sure “The Coming of the Quantum Cats” was the best choice as my first Pohl novel. I chose it because it was standalone, explored parallel worlds theory and I thought it would be a quick read. While there is certainly some value and enjoyment to take from this novel, I ultimately found it to be a clunky, slow read that didn’t age well.
  
  Let’s start with what I liked. It was fun to see Pohl explore other possible worlds with both big and small implications. While there are an infinite number of parallel worlds, we largely get to explore four or five. In one, there is a fascist America with religious persecution controlled by distant rich Arab power brokers. In another, another Nancy Regan is president, governing a highly militaristic society. The politics seem cynically exaggerated. In some worlds, technology is far behind while others are more advanced. Pohl explores multiple versions of the same characters and shows how they can become totally different people with unique politics and morals due to their environment. I also like the continuously change in direction of the plot, because frankly, some of the plot lines were getting boring. It’s the big implications of parallel worlds that is the strongest part of this book.
  
  So what was my issues with it? Well, the book jumps around to different parallel worlds – that’s not a major issue, but then it also changes character perspective every chapter. It wasn’t that I couldn’t follow the plot, but I just found it jarring and awkward. Anytime I was drawn into a character or plotline, we skipped off somewhere else. I also found the work to be dated – not Pohl’s fault, but to me the culture references came across as antiquated instead of nostalgic. In the end, I never really cared for the characters and the ultimate plotline was underwhelming and pessimistic. It wasn’t exactly groundbreaking either, with H.G. Well’s “Men Like Gods” in 1923, Phillip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” in 1962, and David Gerrold’s “The Man Who Folded Himself” in 1973, among many others.
  
  I’m not giving up on Pohl’s work based on the accolades and recommendations of many others. However, I’m rating this novel three stars as an interesting, but dated and poorly executed exploration of the discovery of parallel world travel in the 1980’s.
• 
  Pseudonymous d'Elder

  ___________________________________
  -----------This Time It's Personal--------------
  ___________________________________
  I may have given this book an extra star here because my copy has a personal inscription by Mr. Pohl. In 1986, when the paperback was originally released, he and I were both patrons of the same suburban public library, and after attending a talk he'd given at the library, I got him to sign my copies of The Coming of the Quantum Cats and his novel Gateway. As he was signing my books, I forgot for the moment that I had a degree or two in English Literature, and blurted out that Gateway was my favorite book of all time. He raised one bushy, gray eyebrow and looked at me like I was some kind of damned fool. So, trying to recover from my blunder, I avowed that I just meant my favorite sci-fi novel, and he raised his other eyebrow. And I slunk away. Still, I got his autograph in my book.
• 
  Lost Planet Airman

  A lot of the satire is dated. Since I am also dated, I am finding a pretty even three-way split between satire I don't get, satire I get but is only funny in a limited context of time (or politics), and solid humor.
  
  Overall, an interesting angle on alternative history (and Multiverse, for that matter), as version after version of our protagonists from different versions of recent (1983-wise) history are swept across para-time in the wake of an invasion between the worlds. (No offense to Mr. Pohl, but Mr.
  Keith Laumer did it better.)
  
  A Frederik Pohl notable book for the "Bward" portion of my attempt to read the quality "Grandmaster" works for SF&F. Monopoly "Alt-History".
• 
  Craig

  This is a fun novel of alternate worlds, perhaps a bit more satiric and whimsical and confusing than many of Pohl's solo novels. It has a large and varied cast of interesting characters (and infinite settings, of course), but I found it a little hard to keep track of just what was happening where and to who all the time, but I found persevering to be worthwhile. It hasn't aged as well as most of his work, I suspect, but I think it's still a good, entertaining read.
• 
  Denis

  This was - as expected - a confusing novel to read, but fun just the same. It involved a series of characters from parallel universes brought together by way of a technological "porthole" discovery. The same characters from one universe are forced to interact with those from another.
  
  Frederik did his best to keep it together and managed quite well.
  
  Perhaps it was a little short on plot / story but a very good play-with the quantum mechanics idea.
  
  A good read.
• 
  Mark

  Dominic "Nicky" DeSota is a Chicago mortgage broker in trouble. Arrested by the FBI, he is accused of breaking into a nearby government lab — only at the time, DeSota was on a weekend trip to New York City. This isn't good enough, however, for a moralistic and oppressive federal government, because if it wasn't DeSota, who else could it have been?
  
  Dominic DeSota is a United States senator enjoying a romantic night with the world-renowned violinist with whom he is having an affair when he is asked to fly to a military research lab in Sandia, New Mexico. When he arrives he learns that the military police have Dominic DeSota in custody, a man who is the senator's exact double. Under interrogation, the captive DeSota provides only cryptic answers — just before vanishing right before them.
  
  Dominic DeSota is a United States Army major who has been assigned to an assault team invading another world. Their mission is part of a larger plan designed to use the newfound ability to cross over onto parallel Earths to defeat the Soviet Union and win the Cold War. This plan begins to fall apart, though, when the America they invade proves less than cooperative. And then there is the growing problem of ballistic recoil . . .
  
  Frederick Pohl was one of the grand masters of science fiction's Golden Age. During a career that spanned over seventy years he wrote or co-wrote nearly five dozen novels, some of which endure as classics of the genre. This book is not regarded as one of his best works, in part because of its focus on a particular time and place. Set in the then-contemporary world of 1983, the novel follows the different incarnations of three characters as they discover the existence of their counterparts. As their worlds come into conflict with one another, these characters confront their alternate selves and ponder the differences suddenly before them.
  
  While Pohl uses his premise to address the allure of the life unlived and the degree to which we are defined by the world around us, his main interest is on commenting on the growing conflict between the various Americas he describes. For the most part these worlds are satirical takes on the America of his time, consisting of a police state run by religious fundamentalists, a thinly-veiled military dictatorship, and a complacent self-obsessed superpower. What makes Pohl's novel stand out from similar works of its type is in how he presents these worlds, not by scattering extended infodumps in his text but through the differences between the characters from them. By showing how the lives of Dominic DeSota, Nyla Christophe, and Larry Douglas differed because of their circumstances, he provides a work of alternate history that is among the best of its type. This is why, for all of its datedness, it is still a novel that is very much worth reading.
• 
  David

  Interesting story of travel between "timelines" (different versions of the world which diverge from different choices). Some aspects of some variants were not so believable, but the story raises ideas about the possible uses of travel between timelines and possible consequences of opening portals between timelines.
• 
  Stephen Rowland

  3½. Entertaining, clever, and expertly constructed so one doesn't become lost in its mind-boggling subject matter. My first by Pohl; I'll definitely search out more. Please note this book contains no literal cats.
• 
  Mangieto

  Decidí leer este libro porque creí que era cómico, luego me di cuenta de que era ciencia ficción y, al parecer, de que Frederik Pohl es un buen escritor. Puede que sea verdad, porque mantuvo a flote el libro.
  Cuando comencé a leerlo casi me saco los ojos por el argumento, jamás en mi vida vi que alguien usara con tanta...libertad la "idea" del gato de Schrödinger. No sé cuánto tiempo pensó Pohl en esto, pero por la solidez de su trama me parece que la vio en alguna camiseta y se le ocurrió jugar con ella.
  También al comienzo se me hizo interesante que manejara personajes repetidos, eso de las bifurcaciones en la vida de una persona por la situación de su mundo y la forma en que acaban éstas diferencias...si hubiera esperado otra cosa del libro habría estado perfecto. Pero me mentalicé a leer un libro de ciencia ficción dura(no estoy segura de la traducción al español de ese término) y no me acabó de convencer.
  A pesar de usar tantos, no se me hizo que haya construido un solo personaje sólido. Además de que la trama estaba también poco definida, pasaba una cosa y luego no tenía nada que ver con nada.
  Y de pronto el final, con términos raros que de algún modo salen pero en realidad parece que los metió a la lectura sólo para verse más "de ciencia ficción".
  
  En fin, es una novela con mucha imaginación, pero tuvo un final cortado que no llegó a ninguna conclusión y personajes y una trama muy sueltos.
• 
  Ubikuberalles

  Forget the Heechee, screw the Starchild Trilogy. Man Plus? Forget about it. THIS is Pohl's best book by far. This may not be the best alternate world story but it has done a decent job of messing up my head. I can't stop thinking about it even 29 years after I first read it. Pohl covers a number of concepts in this book but the one that stands out is the "Nature vs. Nuture" dbate (Pohl is in favor of Nuture in this novel). He depicts the same characters, genetically, as their counterparts in alternate universes but they are different in maturity and character simply because they grew up in different environments. I can go on but if you are a big alternate-universe fan, this is a must read book.
• 
  Gloin

  Tenía ganas de leerme un clásico y me dejé llevar por una buena crítica en tercerafundación.net. Bueno, no he perdido el tiempo pero no es una gran maravilla: dos partes de universos paralelos vistos a pequeñísima escala, una de novela romántica políticamente correcta.
• 
  Andreas

  Novel with a lot of jumping between timelines. It has aged badly and is probably only enjoyable for the dedicated Pohl fan.
  
  
  http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=1133
• 
  John Loyd

  Nicky DeSota is picked up by the FBI for trying to break in to some facility. They have him and his fingerprints, but he was in New York at the time. His world is different than ours. Prices, interest rates, adding machines not computers, civil liberties, gender biases, etc. We get a glimpse into another timeline to know that this is just one of many timelines. Out attention shifts to senator Dominic DeSota's timeline which is being invaded by Major Dominic DeSota's. Back in the Alpha timeline we learn there are recoil effects from paratime traveling causing instabilities. Alpha tries to put things straight.
  
  The gamma timeline only thinks of this as a new type of weapon a way to deploy their armaments unseen. Rather than an exchange of cultural information, scientific advancement, or even trying to figure out where the historical turning point occurred. Which is a legitimate take on parallel worlds. We get peeks into four different occupied timelines with focus mostly on the different instances of Dominic, Nyla and Larry. When the major invades the senator, which is the protagonist? Pohl does a good job of balancing so many main characters and coming up with a satisfying resolution. 4.2 stars.
  
  I decided to read a back issue of Analog, my March 86 issue was lost in the mail and I never got a chance to read it. It contains part 3 of 4 of this as a serial. Back then I was skipping the serials, so I read the entire novel.
• 
  Sumant

  I had bought this book having heard good things about Pohl, and I did read unto almost 80% of the book, but I just could not make myself finish the book, because it just keeps on getting more and more confusing at the end, and I could not make a sense regarding who was in which timeline, and what exactly were they trying to achieve.
  
  The book starts in a pretty standard way, where we have an agent called as Dominic Desotta who is trying to make a living in America, but this America is strange because most of the things in this place are controlled by the Arabs, and you slowly start realizing that things are not exactly what they seem in this timeline.
  
  Then Pohl introduces us to another Dominic Desotta, who is a Senator, and things start making sense, that this probably belongs to our timeline, but then we have one more and then one more timeline, and things start becoming murky pretty quickly.
  
  The worse thing is I just did not like any of the Dominic Desotta's in the book, and just don't understand the motivations of the characters.
  
  Also we have excerpts happening at the end of every chapter, which you understand after sometime, as to what is happening, and why it is happening, but after sometime it just does not make any sense to me.
  
  I give this book 2/3 stars, will probably try another Pohl book to form an opinion regarding him.
• 
  Joe

  The submarine-launched cruise missiles the Americans had not known the Soviets owned had been only marginally effective. Still, they had taken out Miami, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle. The bomber-launched smart bombs the Russians had not known the Americans owned had done the same for Leningrad, Kiev, Tiffis, Odessa, and Bucharest. It was the prevailing opinion that the worst was over, since the exchanges appeared to be under the limit for a nuclear winter to follow. It would be a while, though, before anyone knew.

  
  Frederik Pohl experiments with parallel universes and quantum mechanics, in a bamboozling story that, despite its repeated references to Senator Kennedy and his wife Jackie, feels more like the surrealism of Dr. Strangelove.
• 
  Jota Houses

  Después de leer
  Dark Matter decidí volver a leer esta historia clásica (cuántica en realidad, si me permiten un chiste de físico) de universos paralelos que en su momento me reventó el cerebro. Recordaba un libro fresco, alocado, caótico, original y por momentos hilarante. Debo decir que los años no le han sentado bien y no puedo, en conciencia, aplicarle ninguno de estos adjetivos. Más bien es pobre, mecánico, tópico y manido. Narrado en primera persona por varios personajes, hablan todos y todas con la misma voz. Como una vuelta a tu casa de la infancia todo ha encogido y ha perdido la magia.
• 
  Cole

  Surprisingly good take on alternate dimensions, set in the 1980s. Well written, interesting characters, not many gender stereotypes, a story that develops slowly, gains momentum, and has a surprising end. Addresses the science without heavy handedness, and most of all, fun.
• 
  Miguel Vargas Welch

  Genial!!
  Muy habil forma de manejar las diversas realidades paralelas en sus personajes
• 
  Muriel

  Dominic DeSota, mortgage broker, or senator, major, or scientist. Nyla Christophe, FBI agent or musician. Parallel universes. Portals opening and closing.
• 
  Louise

  I do enjoy a good story about parallel universes. :)
• 
  Dawn C

  Thought-provoking, it lost me then got me back and then the last page...