Sea of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel

A blip in the matrix ties together an exiled Englishman forced to move to Canada in the early 20th century, a young woman with a video camera in the late 20th century, and a novelist from the early 23rd century.  An investigator goes to visit all three, hoping to determine if reality is a simulation or not.  When he goes off script and tries to change the past, he finds the true cause for the blip may be closer to home than he realized.

Sea of Tranquility, the latest from Emily St. John Mandel, was the Goodreads Choice Awards winner for best science fiction release in 2022.  I am not familiar with her or her work at all, despite watching some (but not finishing) the adaptation of her 2014 novel Station Eleven.  I wasn’t all that sure where this one was going, and almost thought it was going to be a collection of short stories based on a similar theme before the actual story kicked in and tied it all together.  I don’t read as much science fiction as I used to, the odd Star Trek novel aside, so I may need to look more into her work going forward.