ARC Review : Magenta, by Ed Adams
Physicist Review: A Future Without Footnotes There is a moment familiar to every physicist reading speculative fiction. A character glances meaningfully at a blackboard, another character asks what it means, and the story stops while somebody delivers a short public lecture on quantum mechanics. The cat is summoned. The slits are opened. Entanglement is described as “spooky.” If string theory is involved, dimensions are folded, usually with the aid of a sheet of paper. Ed Adams does none of this. I cannot adequately express my delight. Magenta neither explains string theory nor asks it to perform as decorative authorization for fantasy. The novel does something far more interesting: it asks what another d-brane might feel like. That distinction matters. Physics describes relationships through mathematical structures. Fiction describes the experience of being caught inside relationships before one understands them. Adams wisely leaves the equations where they belong and attends instead...
