I have a love/hate relationship with Blake Crouch’s books. He has fantastic premises about cutting-edge science and writes fast-paced thrillers that keep you eagerly turning the pages to the end. Crouch has been compared to Michael Crichton, in that they both write grounded techno-thrillers about plausible future technology with high-concept books that are ripe for adaptation to the screen (TV and movies). But despite me loving the premises of Crouch’s two previous books, Upgrade and Recursion, ultimately I didn’t like the books as a whole—or more precisely I was let down by their endings.

Recursion and Upgrade follow the “Pandora’s box” narrative. Crouch introduces a mind-blowing new technology that changes the world, but then at the end, the technology is destroyed and everything returns to normal. That was my biggest gripe with Recursion, about a “memory chair” device that allows people to replay their lives and change history in new timelines. In the end [spoiler alert], a character uses the memory chair to go back and prevent the memory chair from ever being invented. I thought Crouch would avoid that trope with Upgrade based on the opening epigraph from Erwin Chargaff: “You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosols; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs; but you cannot recall a new form of life.” That quote would indicate that you can’t put a lid on Pandora’s box once it’s opened (which is also the actual story of Pandora’s box). But [spoiler alert] Crouch basically did the same thing again in Upgrade. They put the tech back in the box (sort of).

The revolutionary technology in Upgrade is genetic engineering. It’s set in the near future, after some catastrophe with genetic engineering resulted in crop failure, mass starvation, and death. Years later, the woman behind the catastrophe, geneticist Miriam Ramsay, has unleashed a new genetically engineered virus containing an upgrade that would make people vastly more intelligent, stronger, and self-aware—basically an “upgrade” to the species. Her son, Logan Ramsay, is an agent for the Gene Protection Agency (GPA), a government organization that cracks down on illegal genetic engineering and arrests people like his mother. But then Logan gets infected with the upgrade virus and becomes a superhuman with vastly higher IQ, strength, speed, and hyper-awareness.

Upgrade is similar to a Ted Chiang story, “Understand,” about someone taking an experimental medication that makes them superintelligent, though that story was far better while being far shorter (a novelette). Chiang avoided the pitfalls of this book, which can get bloated with excess side plots, characters, and melodrama. “Understand” is not as cinematic as Upgrade, but books are not movies. It is more about the interiority of the subject than big action scenes. Also, superintelligent characters can only be as intelligent as the author who creates them, and Chiang is much smarter than Crouch. To me, “Understand” is a perfect story, and I would recommend reading that instead of Upgrade.

Dark Matter is the first Blake Crouch book I read, also with a great sci-fi concept of a “cube” machine that allows people to traverse parallel universes. While the book doesn’t exactly have a “locking Pandora’s box” ending, the story got too bogged down in family melodrama rather than focusing on the world-building and mechanics of the sci-fi technology, which were problems I had with Recursion and Upgrade as well. Crouch’s books are science fiction for people who don’t like to read science fiction. It’s less about the tech and more about the people.

Logan’s mother planned for the virus to spread and infect the entire world to upgrade the human species as a whole. He disagrees with her and tries to stop it from spreading. As I said, [spoiler alert], Logan does stop the upgrade virus. I was slightly disappointed that the book followed the same “closing Pandora’s box” trope as Recursion, but then it was made even worse by the epilogue in which Logan creates a virus of his own to infect the human population. Except it’s not to make people more intelligent, but to make them more compassionate—which felt extraordinarily dumb. Not only are Crouch’s books anti-technology, but now this one is anti-intelligence too? He just wants everyone in the world to be compassionate communists… Ironically that would cause much more death and destruction than a mere increase in intelligence.

Part of the conceit of the book is that the virus would upgrade people’s intelligence, but as a side effect, it would kill a certain number of people. So it was supposed to create this moral quandary: would it be worth it to upgrade the majority of people if it would kill a minority in the process? Logan’s sister, Kara, who is presented as the evil villain in the story, takes their mother’s side—that yes, the tradeoff would be worth it—whereas he says no, it’s not worth that tradeoff.

The book would have been far more interesting without that lethal side effect, if the virus worked as intended and simply upgraded the intelligence of everybody safely. Then you’d seriously have to consider: would it be worth it to upgrade if it means changing human nature? By following Logan after his upgrade, we see how his thinking and behavior change due to the higher intelligence and perception of his own body as well as others. He can read people like a book based on micro-expressions in their faces and subtle changes in their heart rate (which he uses to make money playing poker). However, as a result of the upgrade, Logan struggles to relate to normal human beings, including his own wife and daughter.

So is the upgrade worth it? That is a question worth asking. But the book avoids having to face that question seriously by creating the lethal side effect, making the decision to say “no” much easier. Even if the upgrade worked as intended for all people, there would still be trade-offs (TANSTAAFL). Instead, Crouch created a strawman by making the upgrade kill a certain number of people, thereby dodging the core moral quandary of the technology in lieu of a classic utilitarian trolley problem.

Even still, I enjoyed reading the book (as Crouch writes compelling fast-paced thrillers)—until that terrible epilogue. Logan presents his theory that humanity’s greatest problem is a lack of compassion for other people. But in my mind, that is precisely the opposite of our problem. People have too much compassion and base their political policies on compassion rather than effectiveness. Furthermore, compassion is weaponized politically by bad actors who use it to attain more wealth and power.

Even though Crouch intended them to be villains, I tend to agree with Miriam and Kara: the world needs more intelligence, not more compassion. People have too much compassion as it is. Or rather, they have selective compassion. People are excessively compassionate toward the in-group but not the out-group. Making people more compassionate would just make them care even more for the in-group at the expense of the out-group. What humanity needs is more intelligence and self-awareness, which may help them evolve beyond the tribalism caused by in-group compassion.

Logan’s “empathy upgrade” virus is presented as a panacea that would cure all the world’s problems, but in actuality, more compassion at the expense of intelligence would have disastrous unintended consequences, resulting in mass starvation and death (like Miriam’s original virus). Communist Russia is what a society built on “compassion” looks like. “Wouldn’t it be better if everyone was equal?” It may sound nice, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.