The Technologists (Matthew Pearl, 2012)

There is sort of a cottage industry of literature based on classic literature. Right away the author Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair) and Matthew Pearl (The Dante Club) come to mind. For a lot of people this provides an immediate connection to a work they love (or maybe revile). Having not read either Jane Eyre or The Divine Comedy, I never saw any appeal in reading these books or the sequels and/or related books they spawned. On the other hand, having read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I couldn't resist checking out Finn by Jon Clinch, so I'm not completely immune to the attraction of the sub-genre (call it "meta-classics"?).

When I added The Technologists to my to-read list, I didn't even make the connection that it was the same author as The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, and The Last Dickens. While there isn't a connection to a literary figure, Pearl still keep grounded to a real-life historical entity, this time the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Of course this isn't the MIT of 2015, or even 1915. No, Pearl takes readers all the way back to the days before the graduation of the first-ever MIT class, the Class of 1868. Even the very word "technology" causes society to shudder, and a recent string of "unnatural" disasters pushes Boston to the edge and, in their resulting understandable suspicion, threatens the very existence of MIT. The enemy, naturally, is the well-entrenched, well-heeled Harvard College (Pearl's alma mater and sometimes-employer, oddly enough), whose administration and faculty believe the whole "technology" fad will be passe by 1870. The heroes are a team of nerdy misfits, ranging from the bookish Edwin Hoyt and Asperger's-before-it-was-called-that afflicted Chauncy Hammond, Jr. to "charity scholar" and Civil War vet Marcus Mansfield and Boston Brahmin inheritor Bob Richards. Rounding out "The Technologists" is the only female MIT student, Ellen Swallow. Since this isn't a weird deconstructed novel, it's pretty clear that it's up to the team to reveal who the real villain is and save MIT.

As I was reading, I got a little annoyed by what seemed like "steampunk-lite" elements. (For the record, I find steampunk super-overrated and irritating.) Also, I was getting a little itchy over what I call "awesome-name syndrome" where the characters all sport awesome names you would normally award to D&D characters, though it wasn't the worst I've read. Pearl indeed does revel in the stylized college and upper-crust speak of high society Boston. Fortunately, without giving much of anything away, I did like the "triple-reverse-axle" fake-out ending that left me guessing until the final pages. Finally, the afterword is a must-read, especially if you found the book's style a little off-putting. It turns out Pearl really did his research and most of the characters (even the "awesomely named") are either actual people or closely based on actual people. So, in the end the book really is a decent piece of historical fiction and not a boilerplate mystery novel placed in an idealized setting with no bearing on reality. I appreciate that and have always contended that history is interesting enough that there is no need to re-write it in fiction. Simple tweaks suffice.