Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Via : https://gilda-elise.livejournal.com/287690.html
In 1912, Edwin St. John St. Andrew, youngest grandson of an English earl, scandalizes his father at a dinner party by criticizing the British Raj, and is exiled to Canada as a remittance man. Passive in nature, Edwin drifts from Halifax west to Victoria, British Columbia. Beset by ennui toward Victoria's similarity to English high society, Edwin travels to Caiette, a fictional settlement (which also appeared in Mandel's previous novel The Glass Hotel) on the sparsely-inhabited Vancouver Island. Venturing into a forest, Edwin is overwhelmed by momentarily experiencing being within a vast, dark space, hearing a violin and other sounds he cannot recognize. A stranger named Roberts, claiming to be a priest, questions him about this experience, but flees when Edwin becomes suspicious.
Sea of Tranquility : .[Spoiler (click to open)].The Glass Hotel
In January 2020, years after Vincent Alkaitis's disappearance during the events of The Glass Hotel, her friend, Mirella Kessler, seeking her whereabouts, attends an audiovisual art performance by Vincent's brother, Paul Smith. Paul plays a childhood video filmed by Vincent in which, like Edwin, she is momentarily transported from a forest to a dark, train station-like space where a violin is heard. Mirella is devastated upon learning of Vincent's disappearance at sea. Then, as a man named Gaspery-Jacques Roberts (who accidentally betrays foreknowledge of the COVID-19 pandemic) questions her about the video, Mirella is disturbed to recognize him, seemingly not having aged, from a traumatic murder scene which she witnessed as a child in Ohio. Jonathan Alkaitis' Ponzi scheme is based on the crimes of Bernie Madoff. The Glass Hotel is a 2020 novel by Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel.
In 2203, novelist Olive Llewellyn, a native of a Moon colony, is away from her husband and daughter on a weeks-long Earthbound international book tour. She headlines numerous media events and lectures, promoting her breakthrough novel, Marienbad, about an imaginary influenza pandemic; all the while, reports of a string of real-world viral outbreaks escape her attention. Gaspery-Jacques, who shares the first name of a character in Marienbad, interviews Olive as a journalist, and questions her about a passage in Marienbad describing a character in a spaceport hearing a violin and being transported.
Two centuries after Olive's time, Gaspery-Jacques (who was indeed named after the character she created) works an uneventful job as a hotel detective in another Moon colony. His prodigy sister, Zoey, who followed in their late mother's footsteps as a physicist, confides in him her research into Edwin, Vincent, and Olive's experiences of having swapped places, impossibly, across decades.
Years later, Zoey, who has joined another organization with time travel technology, saves a sixty-year-old Gaspery-Jacques from his incarceration, bringing him to safe lodging near Oklahoma City in 2172. To evade the Time Institute, he receives a new identity and facial surgery, becoming Alan Sami. He realizes that he himself will cause the anomaly by the meeting of his past and future selves at the spaceport. Decades later, having learned the violin and moved to Oklahoma City, Alan plays at the Airship Terminal on the destined day, seeing reality corrupt and repair itself as Edwin, Vincent, Olive, and his past selves all appear before him.
.Centuries later...
"Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why
they exist. They don't use their brains and they have forgotten the secret
knowledge of their bodies, their senses, or their dreams. They don't use the
knowledge the spirit has put into every one of them; they are not even
aware of this, and so they stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere-a
paved highway which they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that
they can get faster to the big empty hole which they'll find at the end,
waiting to swallow them up. It's a quick comfortable superhighway, but I
know where it leads to. I've seen it. I've been there in my vision and it
makes me shudder to think about it." -the Lakota shaman Lame Deer,
Lame Deer Seeker of Visions
dr. π (pi)
.
In 1912, Edwin St. John St. Andrew, youngest grandson of an English earl, scandalizes his father at a dinner party by criticizing the British Raj, and is exiled to Canada as a remittance man. Passive in nature, Edwin drifts from Halifax west to Victoria, British Columbia. Beset by ennui toward Victoria's similarity to English high society, Edwin travels to Caiette, a fictional settlement (which also appeared in Mandel's previous novel The Glass Hotel) on the sparsely-inhabited Vancouver Island. Venturing into a forest, Edwin is overwhelmed by momentarily experiencing being within a vast, dark space, hearing a violin and other sounds he cannot recognize. A stranger named Roberts, claiming to be a priest, questions him about this experience, but flees when Edwin becomes suspicious.
Sea of Tranquility : .[Spoiler (click to open)].The Glass Hotel
In January 2020, years after Vincent Alkaitis's disappearance during the events of The Glass Hotel, her friend, Mirella Kessler, seeking her whereabouts, attends an audiovisual art performance by Vincent's brother, Paul Smith. Paul plays a childhood video filmed by Vincent in which, like Edwin, she is momentarily transported from a forest to a dark, train station-like space where a violin is heard. Mirella is devastated upon learning of Vincent's disappearance at sea. Then, as a man named Gaspery-Jacques Roberts (who accidentally betrays foreknowledge of the COVID-19 pandemic) questions her about the video, Mirella is disturbed to recognize him, seemingly not having aged, from a traumatic murder scene which she witnessed as a child in Ohio. Jonathan Alkaitis' Ponzi scheme is based on the crimes of Bernie Madoff. The Glass Hotel is a 2020 novel by Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel.
In 2203, novelist Olive Llewellyn, a native of a Moon colony, is away from her husband and daughter on a weeks-long Earthbound international book tour. She headlines numerous media events and lectures, promoting her breakthrough novel, Marienbad, about an imaginary influenza pandemic; all the while, reports of a string of real-world viral outbreaks escape her attention. Gaspery-Jacques, who shares the first name of a character in Marienbad, interviews Olive as a journalist, and questions her about a passage in Marienbad describing a character in a spaceport hearing a violin and being transported.
Two centuries after Olive's time, Gaspery-Jacques (who was indeed named after the character she created) works an uneventful job as a hotel detective in another Moon colony. His prodigy sister, Zoey, who followed in their late mother's footsteps as a physicist, confides in him her research into Edwin, Vincent, and Olive's experiences of having swapped places, impossibly, across decades.
Years later, Zoey, who has joined another organization with time travel technology, saves a sixty-year-old Gaspery-Jacques from his incarceration, bringing him to safe lodging near Oklahoma City in 2172. To evade the Time Institute, he receives a new identity and facial surgery, becoming Alan Sami. He realizes that he himself will cause the anomaly by the meeting of his past and future selves at the spaceport. Decades later, having learned the violin and moved to Oklahoma City, Alan plays at the Airship Terminal on the destined day, seeing reality corrupt and repair itself as Edwin, Vincent, Olive, and his past selves all appear before him.
.Centuries later...
"Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why
they exist. They don't use their brains and they have forgotten the secret
knowledge of their bodies, their senses, or their dreams. They don't use the
knowledge the spirit has put into every one of them; they are not even
aware of this, and so they stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere-a
paved highway which they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that
they can get faster to the big empty hole which they'll find at the end,
waiting to swallow them up. It's a quick comfortable superhighway, but I
know where it leads to. I've seen it. I've been there in my vision and it
makes me shudder to think about it." -the Lakota shaman Lame Deer,
Lame Deer Seeker of Visions
dr. π (pi)
.