Hurt/Comfort Exchange

One day everyone in the world woke up with these words in front of their eyes, somehow inscribed in their inner eye: YOU ARE LIVING IN A SIMULATION. Simultaneously, a number of impossible things appeared on Earth, apparently to prove it: a frozen tornado, windows between continents, etc.

It's now seven years later. Those words still appear before everyone's eyes periodically. And tours have sprung up to take people to see the Impossibles, or at least as many as can be seen on a seven-day bus trip.

This extremely high-concept premise resembles that of The Measure in some ways: a world-spanning event, clearly real and equally clearly done by a more-than-human power, with immense existential implications, and with no one having any idea why it happened or why it happened now. But this is Daryl Gregory and he's very good with bizarre high-concept premises, and this book is excellent.

The other genre of When We Were Real is "set of random people thrown together" story. A number of the characters are, at least on the surface, straight out of a 1930s train story or a 1970s airplane story: two nuns, a rabbi, a pregnant woman, an elderly woman in a wheelchair and her devoted daughter, a set of elderly tourists, a person who's secretly dying, a person with a secret identity, a fugitive from the law. The only stock character it's missing is the cute child.

The many characters are very human and likable, with even the most frustrating of them having reasons for being the way they are; the annoying pregnant influencer's reason for being an annoying influencer turns out to be both sympathetic and heartbreaking. (Yes, it's partly to provide for her upcoming baby, but the real question is "Why an influencer rather than some other job?")

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The Impossibles themselves are excellent. My favorite was the time tunnel, where you can stay an infinite amount of subjective time (you get a home pulled out of your own history or desires, plus fresh-baked bread every morning) and emerge several hundred miles away, only a second having passed outside. But the flock of non-real sheep was pretty great too.

There's serious themes - existentialism, mortality, meaning, God, ethics, love - but delivered with a light touch. It's more plotty than I expected, given the quest/picaresque structure, and the story is very satisfying. You don't get answers to all the questions, but you do get a general outline as to what's going on and why. It's a very human and humane novel, of the moment but in a good way.

Content notes: Cancer. Plans for suicide due to terminal illness. Pregnancy and birthing issues. Violence.