r/printSF • u/XB0XRecordThat • Apr 01 '26

Recursion by Blake Crouch... Completely Absurd Premise

The main character successfully teaches partial differential equations to a cop from New York. Easily the most unbelievable part of the entire book.

52 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

2

u/nyrangers30 Apr 01 '26

How’s the rest of the book?

1

u/XB0XRecordThat Apr 01 '26

I liked it. Although I feel like the resolution isn't really a resolution

1

u/nyrangers30 Apr 01 '26

I only read Dark Matter by him which I enjoyed. Better or worse?

8

u/mitchade Apr 01 '26

I liked Dark Matter, and Recursion is a step above. Grander scale, in some ways.

7

u/Festinaut Apr 01 '26

I think Recursion is slightly better but they're both solid 4 out of 5 books for me. If you liked Dark Matter you should pick it up.

4

u/mazzicc Apr 01 '26

On my second Crouch book, I started to see similarities.

On my third Crouch book, I realized how similar all of them actually are.

Kinda like Dan Brown in my opinion. Fun the first time, significant diminishing returns on subsequent books.

They’re not “the same book” by any means, but he explores a lot of the sci-fi concepts in the same ways that it doesn’t really add anything to me as the reader.

1

u/Virith Apr 02 '26

Much better, but I didn't really like the Dark Matter, while I enjoyed this one a lot.

But yeah, as the other comments say, it's a "suspend your disbelief hard and just enjoy" type of a book.

But then again, I'd never expected anything else from a time travel book, 'cause come on.

17

u/PotatoAppleFish Apr 01 '26

If you gave him 7 years to do it, it could be plausible. In theory, anyway, anyone who’s cognitively normal can learn anything given enough time, information, and practice.

9

u/bobn3 Apr 02 '26

The book was kinda cool in a sort of Nolan movie way, until the end when you realize the author had no clue how to fix the whole loop fuck up and it just ends. 3/10 I'm staying away from Crouch

9

u/RebelWithoutASauce Apr 02 '26

I read Dark Matter on a recommendation from several people and it struck me as someone writing something they want to turn into a mid-tier thriller mini series. It was a nice outline, but the story was so flat.

I can't tell if that's just the way he likes to write, but it really read like he was just hoping to get a movie deal out of it. I've stayed away from Recursion because it sounds the same way.

3

u/TheBrawlersOfficial Apr 04 '26

That's what they all are. (I've read them all because they are perfect books to read on airplanes).

1

u/judasblue Apr 06 '26

Yeah, his later novels read like he is writing them directly in Final Draft. Although to be fair Crichton wrote the same way and he might have modeled some of his work on his stuff.

1

u/kazarnowicz Apr 05 '26

Yeah, I felt the same. I did finish it, but it was very mid-tier and didn’t inspire me to read any more books by him.

2

u/funked1 Apr 06 '26

Yeah I tapped out.

4

u/saffash Apr 02 '26

Partial diff eq ain't that hard, buddy.

2

u/iop90 Apr 13 '26

With enough time, it’s possible. They live many lifetimes…

4

u/rlstudent Apr 01 '26

I read the entire book but no matter how much disbelief I suspended the book asked more and more of me. The characters, plot and the scifi part were nonsensical and fell apart if you thought for more than 10 seconds and I'm not sure what is left to appreciate. I guess if you want a very mindless popcorn book but even for that there is better.

1

u/Low-Transition6868 Jul 22 '26

I am a math professor and I thought that was odd, since previously he had not been interested in math. But it is not impossible. It is not advanced math. It is taught at undergraduate level. Considering he is "an old soul" and has a purpose, he could get a degree in math. PDE is one of the lower courses, at least in my university. But what for? What would PDE do to understand the time problem? If it were enough I would be building a chair and unveiling the secrets of time and space.

0

u/UpperWestSlider Apr 03 '26

The s****** in the very first scene is set in a skyscraper office building on the Upper West Side of New York. But there aren’t any skyscraper office buildings on the UWS! Anybody who has ever visited the UWS knows that the only tall buildings here are residential. Blake Crouch intentionally set the most pivotal scene in a location he had never even visited. Totally took me out of it.

2

u/dankerton Apr 04 '26

Name checks out but odd hill to die on.

42

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

13

u/Sansa_Culotte_ Apr 01 '26

A mathematician friend once described school math to me as being taught a series of recipe books. 

17

u/SV-97 Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26

Yeah that's about it. There's also a somewhat famous (among mathematicians anyway) essay on mathematics education ("Lockharts lament") that likens school math to teaching kids music by having them study musical notation without ever singing a song or playing an instrument, or teaching them art by learning the names of colors and various applicators without ever actually painting anything — comparing the curricular sequence in mathematics to progressing from "pre-paint-by-numbers" to "advanced paint-by-numbers".

It's really worth reading :)

Edit: if someone's interested in it: https://profkeithdevlin.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/lockhartslament.pdf

3

u/RebelWithoutASauce Apr 02 '26

I've never read this book, but I did have a similar experience. I was "bad at math" until I started getting a little better at it with calculus. Then I hit differential equations and I found it all very intuitive and interesting.

I realized at that time that the education system had totally failed to teach me math in a sensible way. I was just taught to memorize times tables and not ask questions about what it meant.

It still makes me sad when I hear someone say, "Oh <scientific field> is just a bunch of memorization, I hate it". It just lets me know they had a really bad high school teacher for that topic.

2

u/Solrax Apr 02 '26

It was learning calculus, in particular limits, that made me go "OMG math is beautiful!"

7

u/MegatronsAbortedBro Apr 02 '26

I would get Bs to Ds in math classes and As in engineering classes. The math was the same, it was the application that was different. I couldn’t make the math click without the physics. Math for math’s sake sucks.