Here’s a thought experiment, if you’ll indulge me: Imagine we’re sitting across from each other. It’s fundamental to the way that we experience reality. It sounds very obvious to say that our memories make us who we are. Talk a little bit more about the idea behind the book.Ĭoming off of Dark Matter, which was probably my breakout book, there was a bit of pressure: “How do you top that? What do you say that you haven’t already said before?” I kept thinking about, what is the thing that’s fundamental to the human experience? The more research and the more time I spent studying, I kept coming back to memory, and the way that memory is even more than incredible than we think it is. EW caught up with Crouch prior to the book’s publication on the hype behind Recursion, why it was such a personal project from him, and exactly what we can expect from the Netflix adaptation. The novel centers on Barry Sutton, a New York City cop investigating the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome, and his opponent, Helena Smith, the brilliant neuroscientist behind the technology that could change humanity as we know it.

“But,” says Crouch, “I haven’t seen anything on par with the way people are responding to Recursion.”Ī mind-bending thriller probing the power of memory as reality starts to (literally) crumble, Recursion (published today) was acquired in a huge deal last October: Netflix announced that Shonda Rhimes and Matt Reeves would jointly adapt it - as both a movie and a series. Blake Crouch’s books were the inspiration for TNT’s Michelle Dockery vehicle Good Behavior and the M. The man behind this season’s splashiest screen-bound novel is experienced in this arena. How do we know? Some of this summer’s biggest genre titles have been in development for months, well before film and TV executives could even take a look at a finished copy. Hollywood is hungry for speculative epics imagining alternate realities grim enough to shake your faith in humanity. The future of book adaptations is looking bright - and, well, a little terrifying.

Blake crouch recursion netflix