Of One Mind

Of One Mind by JB Maerten is one of the better sci-fi novels I have read in a while. Its plot is embedded deeply into an empathetic core and an appreciation for humanity. It follows the story of Dr. Rene Elder, an expert neurosurgeon who researches how ultrasound frequencies can affect the brain. She left the hospital where she worked due to a conflict with a more traditional researcher, Dr. Strauss, whose ethics are questionable. As an independent researcher, she inadvertently discovers a way to adjust the ultrasound frequencies to connect minds together from subjects located in two different rooms. The implications are astonishing and indicate that telepathy could be induced in patients. Meanwhile, a brother and sister named Owen and Kristen, must face the decision-making process of allowing Kristen's brain-damaged son to either remain on life support or end his life. Owen and his zen friend Yoshi find out about Dr. Elder's progressive and controversial research and take it for a test run, only to find out that the Witness works! After some disorientation, they are able to connect their minds together and experience something that takes on an incredibly spiritual significance, not only for themselves, but also for Dr. Rene Elder, who is a confirmed atheist. Kristen, however, doesn't believe in the Witness and has determined that Kyle should be euthanized, to her own devastation. But Owen feels that it should be Kyle's decision to make and that Witness could give him a voice. However, Dr. Strauss and his ambition means sabotage for Dr. Elder's experimentation and he stands in the way of their progress. Medical competition and Dr. Strauss' need for acclaim towers over Dr. Elder's efforts. Will she be able to defeat him and find a way for Kyle's voice to be heard?

While telepathy is more of a sci-fi, pseudoscience idea, the way in which it is presented allows for some suspension of disbelief. Maerten's work is well-written and empathetic with a small family that has undergone challenges and impossible hardships. The closeness of family and friends are heartwarming and also counteract the loneliness and isolation that Dr. Elder feels. Thematically-speaking, Maerten's work underscores the importance of human connection and affirms the essential and valuable nature of life and death. The author opens up questions about what an afterlife would look like, or what sort of comfort we can give each other in the moments when we say goodbye to our most loved family members. It's a touching book, and also a deeply interesting one. The characters are multi-faceted and there are even moments where the language shifts into a more poetic voice, appropriate for their experiences in the Witness. The only moment that required too much suspension of disbelief was when Owen expects to steal scientific equipment from Dr. Elder's lab to use on Kyle himself without any kind of authorization or legality. The question of the experimentation is one left unresolved. We are supposed to believe that all is forgiven. In real life, it absolutely would not and violates all kind of ethics. Other than that, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys science fiction, is interested in spirituality or the relationship between physical health and psychology. The book is beautifully written and has a literary feel to it.

This is the story of a young man who is "locked in" and cannot communicate and the doctor/scientist who discovers a way to use telepathy for communication. There are certainly aspects of science, ethics, faith/beliefs, and patient rights in this story. Reading about the symptoms/experience of locked in syndrome at times made me feel a bit claustrophobic at the thought of being aware but unable to communicate. The author really brought the reader into the family's struggles and this was an interesting and unique novel.
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for access to this eARC.

I thank netgalley as well as girl friday prod for giving me a chance to preview this book. I was lured in by the title, the cover page and the description of the book. It did not fail a bit. I decided that only if the first few pages pulled me in will I go ahead. And boy, I could not put down the ebook. The story of a new technology without any overwhelming scientific details, the implications on the society and religion, the moral issues around euthanasia is all written so beautifully. At places it made me teary eyed especially grappling with the decision to end Kyle’s life. The tension around scientific inventions and the mad competitive race for more grants, accolades in the scientific world comes across very well (and I could so much relate to it as a academician). The ending was quite unexpected, and soft, where I was expecting a thriller and racy duel between the scientists. But eventually I liked the way it ended, giving a decent closure to the main story and leaving room for a future novel (?) related to the release of this technology into society. Looking forward to something on those lines!

Go on and grab a copy of Of One Mind.

If you fear, as I did, when you come upon a scene in JB Maerten’s “Of One Mind” where a doctor is fighting with her boyfriend over whether to raise any future children in an organized religion, that the novel is going to turn out to be religious rather than secular, fear not. Yes, there’s a strong element of the uncanny or fantastic to the book, indeed the unimaginable is at its very core, but it’s of a distinctly secular sort as the avowedly nonreligious doctor pursues her research into the possibility of a universal consciousness into which individual consciousnesses can tap and share experiences.
Not that her original aim had been anything so ambitious as she sought simply to investigate whether linking two subjects’ consciousnesses as they’re both hit with noninvasive ultrasound can make them more likely to pick the same objects in random selections. But so surprising and intriguing are the results, with the subjects’ minds actually seeming to merge to some extent, that they scare off one of the subjects and raise the tantalizing possibility of helping a mother communicate with her teen son who has been left a quadriplegic and unable to communicate in any measurable way after an auto accident.
Not so taken, though, with her research, indeed openly hostile to it, is a colleague of hers whose professional preference is for more conventional but invasive electrode therapy, which earlier made for an unfortunate surgical incident which his female colleague reported him for, making for a strained relationship between the two. And caught in the middle is the teen’s mother, who must decide between the opposing courses of treatment proposed by the two doctors – along with the option, of course, of simply pulling the plug.
A fearsome choice, to be sure, with her perhaps understandably leaning away from the female doctor's treatment, with its unconventional nature, even if I found the mother’s reluctance somewhat hard to understand, given the unsavory alternatives. Also, the book’s climax, which has the principals racing about in the manner of a conventional thriller, had me wishing for a more sober consideration of the book's intriguing possibilities.
Still, a fascinating fictional exploration, Maerten’s novel, which to my mind could have benefited from some sort of indication, in the text or afterward, as to just how close we might be to the cognitive possibilities the book raises, given that things once thought to be impossible or eons away, like artificial intelligence and CHatGPT, have already now become mainstream realities.