The Coming of the Quantum Cats
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 Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | Frederik Pohl |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
| Released | 1986 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 243 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-553-05129-6 |
The Coming of the Quantum Cats is a 1986 science fiction novel by American writer Frederik Pohl.
[edit] Plot introduction
This satiric novel hinges around invasions from alternate Earths in alternate universes. None of these universes are quite like our universe; however, they all have some element or other in common.
- In one universe Nancy Reagan is the President of the United States and her mostly-disregarded husband Ronald is known as "The First Gentleman".
- In another universe, America's political spectrum has shifted so far to the right that Ronald Reagan is regarded as dangerously left-wing.
- In the past of one of the worlds, the young revolutionary Joseph Dzhugashvili (NOT known in this world as Stalin) had escaped from Russia to America in the 1900s, taking with him the proceeds of a bank robbery conducted on behalf of the Bolsheviks and using the money to set himself up as a big American capitalist.
The book presents multiple versions of the same person. It begins with Nicky DeSoata, a rather timid wimp who lives a quite miserable life as a real-estate agent (though he gets a chance to improve his fortunes later on). In another reality, there is a US Senator named Dominic DeSoata, an important and assertive person who tries to do his best. In still another there is a Major DeSOATA, Dominic P., who is also very assertive but in a quite malevolent way, deeply involved in the business of unprovoked invasion of other realities.
Aside from these three viewpoint characters described in detail who meet and re-meet each other throughout the book, there are brief glimpses of numerous other Dominic DeSoatas, who are anything between a nuclear scientist and a hunter scrabbling for bare existence in the ruins left after a nuclear holocaust. Towards the end, when characters from many timelines are brought together, there is a scene when a whole bunch of nuclear scientist DeSoata's sit drinking and talking shop, and one of them by mistake addresses the real-estate DeSoata in words which he finds incomprehensible.
Other characters are also doubled and tripled. Nyla Bowquist, DeSoata's beloved in several realities, is a world-famous violinist in one reality, a tough secret policewoman in another.
The book seems to argue in favor of the idea that social conditions rather than heredity are what shapes a person's character and behaviour (the Nature versus nurture debate). In that, it has a similarity of theme with the otherwise very different Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh, published two years later (1988).
The novel is basically light-hearted, and ends on a relatively hopeful note.
