In honor of today's Ayrault lecturer Dr. Brian Greene, string theorist, physicist, and author of The Elegant Universe, I thought I'd mention The Last Universe by William Sleator, a science fiction book that uses quantum mechanics to send its two main characters -- fourteen-year-old Susan and her brother Gary -- to other times and other versions of their present reality by virtue of a complicated maze in their garden.
Susan is annoyed that she has to spend her summer taking care of her brother Gary, who is wheelchair-bound and getting more and more ill; she resents the attention that he gets from their family and friends and hates giving up all the fun times with her friends to push him around in the garden. Gary, though terminally ill, is brilliant and has been reading about quantum physics, knowledge which comes in handy when he and Susan discover a sometimes-invisible maze in their garden that can only be seen from one window of their house. Their great-uncle, who was celebrated in the field of quantum mechanics, is credited for building this maze, and each time they enter it, something shocking happens -- when they return from the maze, reality is different, at first in little ways, and then progressivly bigger ways, with no one else the wiser. Gary also seems to get better with each trip, and he and Susan continue to enter the maze in search of an alternate reality in which Gary is well.
The science used as a backdrop for this book is explained well and doesn't get too confusing, but it is an important part of the story; meanwhile, the dynamic between siblings Susan and Gary is the focal point, as first Susan resents going into the maze and then realizes that she has to continue to do so to save her brother's life. Each trip into the maze is dangerous and suspenseful, because Susan and Gary never know what will be waiting when they come out again; when Susan has to enter the maze without Gary, who has been hospitalized, the suspense ratchets up further, and the surprising twist ending is a shock, but a wholly satisfying one.
So, if you're looking for a fictional exploration of the uncertainty of quantum mechanics and how it may be extrapolated to affect reality, look no further than The Last Universe by William Sleator.
While we do not have this book in Pigott Library, we do have four other Sleator books, all which deal with compelling scientific ideas: cloning (The Duplicate), time travel (Strange Attractors), the fourth dimension (The Boy Who Reversed Himself), and psychological experimentation (House of Stairs). Sleator is an excellent dark science fiction writer, and his books are all recommended.