The Subtle Art of Folding Space

In Hugo and Nebula award winner Chu’s smart, funny, and intricate debut, a Gaia-like presence lies comatose, and it’s up to her daughter Ellie to rescue her. Complicating this quest are physics student Ellie’s fears that saving her mom will mean tampering with the “skunkworks,” the liminal plane that underpins the multiverse, and her vicious older sister, Chris, who, since childhood, has been staging daily attacks against Ellie with the pretext of honing her survival skills. Meanwhile, their cousin Daniel serves as a fact-checker for the skunkworks. Whenever a glitch in the laws of physics is reported—such as a beach ball going through a wall instead of bouncing off it—he manifests repair plans. When Daniel and Ellie are summoned to a meeting with the multiverse’s chief architect, Mary, the cleverly unfolding plot gets a new crease. To save their universe and many others, Daniel and Ellie must wrangle with a renegade posse of physicists who are warping the laws of nature to keep Ellie’s mom alive. Chu loads his tale with wordplay and cultural and scientific references that read like inside jokes for an audience of engineers. It’s as rollicking as it is thought-provoking. (Apr.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review misidentified the location where Ellie’s mom lies comatose and misdescribed Mary as Taiwanese. The review has been further updated for clarity.