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  • Version Control

  • A Novel
  • By: Dexter Palmer
  • Narrated by: January LaVoy
  • Length: 18 hrs and 52 mins
  • 3.8 out of 5 stars (166 ratings)
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Version Control cover art

Version Control

By: Dexter Palmer
Narrated by: January LaVoy
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Summary

The acclaimed author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion returns with a compelling novel about the effects of science and technology on our friendships, our love lives, and our sense of self.

Rebecca Wright has reclaimed her life, finding her way out of her grief and depression following a personal tragedy years ago. She spends her days working in customer support for the Internet dating site where she first met her husband. But she has a strange, persistent sense that everything around her is somewhat off-kilter: She constantly feels as if she has walked into a room and forgotten what she intended to do there; on TV, the president seems to be the wrong person in the wrong place; her dreams are full of disquiet. Meanwhile, her husband's decade-long dedication to his invention, the causality violation device (which he would greatly prefer you not call a "time machine") has effectively stalled his career and made him a laughingstock in the physics community. But he may be closer to success than either of them knows or can possibly imagine.

Version Control is about a possible near future, but it's also about the way we live now. It's about smart phones and self-driving cars and what we believe about the people we meet on the Internet. It's about a couple, Rebecca and Philip, who have experienced a tragedy, and about how they help - and fail to help - each other through it. Emotionally powerful and stunningly visionary, Version Control will alter the way you see your future and your present.

©2016 Dexter Palmer (P)2016 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Mind-bending.... A compelling, thought-provoking view of time and reality." (Booklist)

"Far more than a standard-model time travel saga.... Palmer's lengthy, complex, highly challenging second novel is more brilliant than his debut, The Dream of Perpetual Motion.... Palmer earned his doctorate from Princeton with a thesis on the works of James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, and William Gaddis. This book stands with the masterpieces of those authors." (Publishers Weekly)

"A Mobius strip of a novel in which time is more a loop than a path and various possibilities seem to exist simultaneously. Science fiction provides a literary launching pad for this audacious sophomore novel by Palmer. It offers some of the same pleasures as one of those state-of-the-union (domestic and national) epics by Jonathan Franzen, yet its speculative nature becomes increasingly apparent.... A novel brimming with ideas, ambition, imagination, and possibility yet one in which the characters remain richly engaging for the reader." (Kirkus Reviews)

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What listeners say about Version Control

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
  • P
  • 23-03-17

I don't understand why all the good reviews

I love a good sci-fi, but feel I am seriously missing the point of this book! I was determined to stick with it as the reviews were so good, but after 5 hours in, yes 5 hours, when nothing had actually happened other than a few women walking around doing very boring mundane things, I finally gave in!
There was an interesting bit for about 10 minutes after the third hour, when they started talking about time travel, I thought here we go finally, but no, back to women talking about men again! Really???!!!

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Will I read a better book in 2016?!

I absolutely loved this novel. It's long, but I would have happily stayed in its world for twice the length. Towards the end I rationed myself as I didn't want it to end. It's complex and compelling, a biting commentary on our society as well as a fully realised plot that races along, keeping you fully engaged.

It's a time-travel novel, but time-travel as it might really happen if scientists were a few steps closer to seeing results today. There's lots of physics, but explained in such a compelling way, that for moments I felt like I actually understood some of it.

This novel has everything in it. It's a domestic drama, a story of bereavement handled sensitively and honestly. Palmer holds a mirror up to human society and reflects, for me anyway, a convincing, often hilarious portrait of how we behave, how we have been molded by the internet, big data, algorithms.

At its heart it is the story about relationships, how people try to navigate their paths towards contentment in a world which seems dead set on thwarting them. A feeling of unease, insecurity and maybe paranoia suffuses the pages of this book. It's an unsettling read, but an absolute masterpiece. I couldn't have imagined a better narrator than January Lavoy for this story. She was perfect.

Highly and strongly recommended.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Aims high, misses completely.

Short form: not recommended at all.

Long form: I struggled with this.
Struggled to finish it(nearly gave up at the 3/4 mark, but persisted until the end).
Struggled to like or empathise the characters.
Struggled to understand why the book just keep going.
Struggled to understand how the ending goes back on something that we've been told cannot happen for the last 13 hours!

It's just a mess of a book. The author had obviously read a few pop science articles on gravitational waves and the psychology behind the 30 year null result and decided to work that into the book. The problem is that I don't think he fully understands what Harry Collins (whose book he actually name drops) research shows.

I suppose that this book might annoy me more than most people as I worked on the LIGO project searching for gravitational waves. From the clunky way the author tries to represent physicists, to the lack of understanding of the field, in my opinion this book failed in one of its main goals.

Further, there are passages describing the son playing an old game. For some reason rather than stating what the game is (Persona) the author makes it full of mystery to obfuscate which game it is. This just underlines the strange choices made.

Ironically, there's a part in the book where the author maligns the way science fiction is written. Turns out it's harder than he thinks it is, considering the failure he's made of it.

All in all, it's as if this book was designed just to irritate me...and if that is the case, it worked brilliantly.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars
  • J
  • 30-09-17

The reason abridged versions exist

Possibly the dullest thing I have listened to. There is just no story driving this along, which is a shame because the narrator is very engaging and her performance was the only thing that kept me listening. I beleive it’s meant to be a commentary on the human condition but there are no great insights and certainly nothing that could not have been said in half the time. Would have been the first book I returned if I had not missed the deadline.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Dull, so very dull

Would you be willing to try another one of January LaVoy’s performances?

yes

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

disappointment, anger

Any additional comments?

Struggled to get to the end of this book - you would think with a name like “Version Control” it would be interesting & scientific - but it reality this book is just a long soap/drama.

Dull, so very dull - the excruciating detail on the most minor things - you think are leading up to something - but no - just the same monotonous droll.

I do not understand the high reviews this book had - it was my misguided trust in these reviews that encouraged my purchase of this book – In future I shall be doing a lot more research than blindly trusting these reviews.

Can't fault the narrator though - it was her voice and presentation that got me sticking to the book - if not for her I would have given up.

Feel very let down :(

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

If you liked cloud atlas

Original plot line, well developed characters and impressive talented narration. One of my best listens. Highly recommend.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Sci-fi hidden under a romance

This is a very long listen, and having got a third of the way through I was wondering when the sci-fi would begin. I started to think I'd accidentally picked another genre in fact!
There was the "don't-call-it-a-time-machine" Causality Violation Device, always present in the story of course but since it was non-functioning it didn't seem to qualify as "sci". - Having said that, my husband writes for a scientific magazine and enjoyed the book being on in the background one afternoon. He thought it was a pretty authentic portrayal of life in a science lab.

Of course the CVD *does* actually work and the realisation of that fact is brought to the reader's attention in a cleverly subtle way.
Then I was hooked and I could relax and enjoy the often mundane details of the characters lives, just waiting to spot the next twist.
I wondered how it could possibly resolve into a conclusive ending, but the author did a very good job of making the impossible seem plausible.
Narration was very good, although best for the women characters. Sometimes the "he said" "she said" back and forth was a bit tedious, but I guess at can't be avoided.

Overall a great book for science nerds and time-travel enthusiasts, provided they have a lot of time available to listen.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Pointless waffle turned up to 100%

This is not a long book by any means, but 8 hours in and i have given up.
There is nothing but detailed descriptions of different lives, weaving between each other. The mundane parts of our lives have been accurately re produced in this book. Flitting from one storyline to another. Most of the time i had no idea what was going on. Nor most importantly did i care.

I totally understand where the book is coming from in respect to the dangers coming in our future with social media etc but this is so very boring i have asked for my credit back.

Great performance , but i feel 8 hours of my life have been completely wasted.

Very poor, and i just don't understand the 5 star reviews. They must be people from the book. Stuck in an alternative universe where things just don't fit and feel right......

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Long but involving

At one level this book can seem very involved with seeming inconsequential minutiae of lives that are basically.......boring, despite the inclusion of cutting edge physics. However it's in the minutiae that detail exists, and in the detail lies variation that is the heart of the story. As others have mentioned, it slowly draws you in and by the end I was thoroughly engaged and not wanting it to end. Plus it's a book that makes you think more after you've finished, rather than simply moving on to the next story.

The narration was very good, I can (xenophobic comment!!) sometimes fall asleep with American narrations, I don't know why, but this is very good and she really gets the different characters across.

Recommended

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great ideas explored

Really enjoyed the audio book mainly because the performance of the narration was exceptional.

Some of the chapters could stand alone as scientific vignettes in essay form, as they look at themes of time, space, parenthood, relationships, technology and society through a scientific microscope.

I expected this book to be more about time travel in the traditional science fiction sense but was surprised and happy with the story focusing more on human relationships and choices.

Glad I downloaded it.

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