Book review: Every Version of You by Grace Chan

 

It’s the year 2080. Australia—and the world at large—is crumbling from the effects of climate change. People must wear air filters and protective gear against radiation each time they step outside. But the lucky ones—like Tao-Yi and her boyfriend Navin—hardly go outside anyway. They barely spend any time at all in the physical world. They spend most of their time in virtual reality. And in 2080, the biggest VR company is about to release their latest product: Gaia, a “Massively Unified Simulated Reality Matrix” which will instantly make all previous products obsolete and which will provide a single platform for all purposes of virtual reality—a place to work, shop, socialize, play, and essentially live.

 

We’ve been to this place before, of course. From Neal Stephenson’s classic Snow Crash to the Matrix movies and more, we’ve been to many versions of this future—a place where the attractions of a simulated digital reality beckon us away from the real world. We are, in many ways, at this place right now, in our real lives. And yet Grace Chan’s debut novel, Every Version of You, takes us to this place with a quiet thoughtfulness, with an emotional complexity and verisimilitude, that I have not seen in any other fictional depiction.

 

Every Version of You shifts backward and forward in time, from Tao-Yi’s first meeting with her boyfriend, Navin, to a time before the launch of Gaia, when cities were still vibrant with people socializing and traveling in the physical world. The novel follows Tao-Yi and Navin, and their friends and family, as the world changes again and again—as the physical world crumbles, and as Gaia is updated with its biggest release yet: the option to upload one’s mind permanently into the virtual world of Gaia, to leave the physical human body permanently behind, and to become essentially immortal.

 

While the major technological ideas in this novel are not new, Chan explores the human effects in heartbreaking detail. The Gaia technology divides humanity from the start; from its very launch, there are those who cannot afford it, who are left out and left behind. The new uploading technology results in an even greater divide. This is illustrated most heartbreakingly in the conflict between Tao-Yi and Navin. Navin jumps at the opportunity to live permanently in Gaia—not least because in the physical world he suffers from a chronic illness which leaves him with frustrating physical limitations and in chronic pain. In the virtual world he feels no pain, and has no limitations. Yet even as Navin and more and more of Tao-Yi’s friends upload themselves permanently into Gaia, Tao-Yi cannot bring herself to join them. At first she tells people that it’s because she wants to stay behind to care for her mother, who also refuses to leave the physical world. But there’s something more to her decision: a deep-rooted attachment to the physical world that she cannot explain, but which she cannot give up.

 

Grief and loss suffuse Every Version of You. There is grief for the earth itself, for the damage that humans have done to it, for the diversity of life lost. There is grief for the loss of relationships, for love that tries to bridge the gap but can’t. There is grief for the inevitability of death. Everyone who chooses to not upload themselves into Gaia has chosen to eventually die. And this choice means that their deaths are even more heartbreaking for their loved ones in Gaia—because from the perspective of their friends and family in the virtual world, it’s a completely unnecessary death, one that need never occur.

 

Chan explores these ideas and more with a deft touch, with nuance and generosity toward all her characters. This is a painfully gorgeous book, written in luminous prose. The world she depicts is richly textured, and she raises questions without easy answers. At the heart of this book are the human relationships—the relationship between Tao-Yi and her mother, Tao-Yi and her friends, and most of all Tao-Yi and Navin. For all the sci-fi trappings, a quiet and poignant love story beats at this novel’s center. Yet at the end, the journey Tao-Yi takes is one she does on her own. In a world of dizzying change and loss, the final character arc is of a woman finding and staying true to herself, despite the pleading and pressure of loved ones, despite all the chaos and upheaval and uncertainty of her world.