of the Quill:  "The Houses of Time" by Jamil Nasir

I just completed "The Houses of Time" by Jamil Nasir.  I think I may have seen a reference to it on IO9 or some link off of that site, and had put it into the library queue.  Its an exploration of a couple of things, most apparently the idea of dreams being a gate into parallel universes; on another a more human exploration of what people are willing to do to each other based on their priorities, and how our own behaviors rarely have the clear label of "good" or "bad" in the moment.  Nasir did what I thought was a great job of pointing to without attempting to explain in details many of the complexities around alternate universes, and the neuroscience of dreaming.  I found myself recalling immediately lessons from string theory and its implications that I've been able to get a glimpse of through the accessible explanations of folks like Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, and others.  I couldn't help but think of other lessons; resistance to paradigm shifts and how that affects they way we interpret anything that doesn't meet our expectations, and I found myself questions some of the historical references; in one point a fictional professor is explaining how the mind interprets visual data and uses and example of indegenous people in the time of Columbus not seeing ships because they had no mental model, which I'm not sure I buy into.  Fascinating for the concepts it touches on, and its approach to how people react to the situations they get in; I found myself frustrated by and sympathisizing with the characters in a way that told me Nasir had accomplished a level of reader engagement I think any author looks for.  Thought provoking book.