The Technologists, Matthew Pearl

The Technologists
Author: Matthew Pearl
American Historical Fiction - 1868
Random House, 2012
ISBN: 9781400066575
This was an interesting read.

I first picked this one up over a year ago when it first came out, but never got around to reading it (yay grad school!) until now.

I'm actually a bit pleased with how that worked out, because if the book hadn't echoed some of the circumstances of my own life, I don't know that I would feel as charitable towards it as I do.

I've not read any of Matthew Pearl's other work, and I picked this one up mainly because it was advertised to me as being a little bit "alternate history science fiction."  First off, gotta say that was very much overemphasized.  I didn't see much of anything that would make me put this into anything other than historical fiction.

That said, I did find it interesting.

Gist: The first graduating class of MIT (1868) in the months leading up to their graduation have to overcome challenges caused by their different backgrounds and personality types, the financial difficulties facing their Institution, a growing rivalry with Harvard, and a madman's attempts to destroy Boston with scientific discoveries put to nefarious purpose.

The good:
The story deals with the feelings and worries of the students as they prepare to graduate, work their butts off in their last school assignments, and worry about their futures.  Really hit home for me as I graduate in 2 weeks myself.  I very much identified with Marcus and his fears especially. 

I've not read anything before about the beginnings of MIT, and I staunchly support science and "tech" schools.  I found the origin story to be really fascinating, especially that both the "gentlemen" of Harvard and Boston and the "laborers" of the factories disliked the technologists and feared that they would upend society.  (Smart people - they were right!)

Many of the characters in the book were actually real, and essentially all of the graduating seniors were actual people.  That always makes for an interesting thought.  I was especially thrilled to learn that Ellen Swallow was a real person, and a real student at the time.  Very brave of her.


The bad:
After finishing the book, I read that a hallmark of Pearl's is to include lots of red-herrings.  I don't particularly like that technique, and found that instead of being tantalizing leads, they were a bit heavy-handed, and therefore suspicious. 

I was expecting there to be more "steampunk" or "alternate" science.  To be fair, that was more because of the specific recommendation I got, and less to do with the book itself, although I do think it would have been much better if he had been more descriptive of the science-y parts - either wholeheartedly embraced the psuedoscience involved and just blithely made descriptive shit up, or talk to a real chemist and work out a way to achieve the results in real life and then describe the process/remnants that way.  I thought the half-hearted descriptions did the plot a major disservice.

I didn't like the casual inclusion of viewpoint characters just for them to be killed off.

I didn't like how little time was spent dealing with the motivations of the bad guy.  While trying to avoid spoilers, let me just say that it should be entirely possible for those motivations to have merited more than two short flashback segments out of the entirety of the book.  In addition, the racial issue was a little bit distasteful.  I know it shouldn't matter, but it does to me.

Overall it wasn't amazing.  I am glad I read it, I enjoyed most of it.  I would recommend it to MIT students, historical (or Americana) readers, or people who like a good twisty thrillerish mystery.