While beguiling at the beginning, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel fell apart for me when it shifted to the future on page 67, supposedly the year 2203. This chapter or section reads like thinly veiled autobiography from a twenty-first century book tour with a litany of travel complaints – a time 200 years from now where somehow men haven’t evolved beyond the 1950s. If there is gender development it’s puzzling; for example, a woman is named “Vincent” for no apparent purpose or acknowledgement it could be misinterpreted.
While the author’s soft touch writing style is pleasing, when dealing with complex concepts it seems to lack the required depth. For example, alluding to a “device” with no acknowledgement about what this so-called device actually does, no comparable physics, only later calling it a time-travel device. There is the vague notion that corporations can still be bad, even time-travel corporations, and there are references to a multiverse and a “simulation” but they aren’t developed much further than in passing. Terms are used with seemingly little desire to explore their implications. The static in the video, which is the crux of the story, is supposed to be what? I think it’s a disruption in time and space, or maybe a time loop of some sort, but who knows? For me, it’s not developed enough, not fleshed out into an interesting concept.
However, there are many things to enjoy in reading Sea of Tranquility, and I could recommend it for those who like skimming along the surface of more or less soft science fiction, with dome cities, time travel, and for the most part likable characters.
