Published by Orbit on March 5, 2013
Doughnut is a playful take on the multiverse hypothesis. If you can travel between universes, does that make you a god?
Theo Bernstein is an unlikely god. Theo put a decimal point in the wrong place and the Very Very Large Hadron Collider blew up, along with some of Switzerland, so now Theo is looking for a job. That the accident left his right arm invisible only makes it more difficult for him to secure employment. Theo eventually returns to Switzerland to pick up a mysterious bottle bequeathed to him by Pieter van Goyen, a recently deceased colleague. The trip becomes more interesting when he meets a girl on a train who shows him some equations before she vanishes. Theo soon finds himself in YouSpace, sort of like Second Life combined with Westworld except that his destinations all seem to be random (and dangerous) points in the multiverse. A note left by Pieter tells Theo to have fun with it. Fun is pretty much out of the question.
Pieter's note also directs Theo to a job at a hotel that has only two (odd, mysterious) guests, where he works alongside (odd, mysterious) Matasuntha and her (odd, mysterious) boss. As Theo explores the multiverse, barely escaping multiple deaths (or not), he finds himself interacting with his a-hole brother and mentally ill sister, further enhancing his misery.
Theo is a likable if somewhat hapless protagonist, stuck with a dysfunctional family and used as a pawn by people he thought were his friends, making it easy to root for his success. As is often true of science fiction stories, whether Theo will prevail depends upon his ability to outwit everyone else.
Some aspects of Doughnut are hilarious, particularly when Tom Holt pokes fun at Microsoft. The overall story is clever, funny, and deep enough to provoke thought about the multiverse hypothesis without bogging down in discussions of science that may or may not be sound. I'm not sure the science (as Holt explains it) entirely makes sense (I'm skeptical about the invisible arm) but I am sure it doesn't matter. The point of comedy is to be funny, and Doughnut consistently made me smile.
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