Book 2: The Flicker Men, by Ted Kosmatka
The Flicker Men is a science-based thriller that is built on the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Physics Specifically, the book is based on the (old) theory that particles existing in a superposition of states can be made to “collapse” to a single state upon being measured or observed, and furthermore, that the observer can be shown to require some form of human consciousness to cause the collapse. Given this interpretation, the protagonist, Eric Argus, sets out to determine what, exactly, constitutes “human consciousness” through a serious of experiments. This a course of action ultimately leads him into a dangerous underworld of secret organizations that will go to almost any length to bury the results that his experiments reveal.
While I am not typically a fan of books that play quite so “loose and fancy free” with the underlying science, the book delivers fast-paced suspense and interesting character development, while still keeping at least one foot in the general area of “real” science, and I found it to be worth the read.
Rating: Borrow it. Not a book I am likely to read again.