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K. K. Edin
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The Measurements of Decay Kindle Edition

by K. K. Edin (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.4 3.4 out of 5 stars 173 ratings
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In the far future, Earth’s nearby star systems have been colonized. Outfitted with a device that allows them to escape into hallucinations at will, people spend most of their time withdrawn into their own minds. Tikan Solstafir, a renegade who refuses the illusory life enjoyed by others, lives in self-imposed exile on a starship. When a mysterious enemy attacks the ship, Tikan embarks on a mission to destroy the galactic tyranny and liberate humanity from its own dreams.

Meanwhile, in the 21st Century, a disillusioned philosopher believes that humanity’s collective misery originates in people’s failure to communicate with others and make sense of the world. Growing increasingly misanthropic and monomaniacal, he proceeds on a hermetic quest to save humanity from itself, while also succumbing to his own moral decline.

As these stories intertwine, a young girl reappears through various epochs, fleeting through Ancient Greece, Medieval Norway, Bolshevik Russia, among others. Unbound by time, Sielle has formed few attachments. Eventually thrust into Tikan’s world, she becomes unwillingly entangled in a political scheme spanning centuries.

An engrossing and multi-layered science fiction epic, The Measurements of Decay is K. K. Edin's stunning debut. At once a tortured love letter to philosophy and a space opera spanning centuries, it is a novel of ideas wrapped in a cautionary tale.

Purchase The Measurements of Decay today and discover how small events in the present grow to dominate the far future.
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  1. Print length
    590 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    March 25, 2018
  5. File size
    1299 KB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"It's not every day that an author goes out of their way write a complex philosophical dissertation in the style of David Mitchell but goes on to make it hardcore SF with mind-blowingly cool science tropes, transhumanism, and a man-made god in the service of the serious philosophical treatise... I'm flabbergasted. This is the kind of SF novel that comes along only a handful of times in a generation..." Bradley Horner, Bradley Horner's Book Reviews. 5/5

"A book so dense with ideas it baffles me that it could live inside someone's head...I couldn't put it down. I read it every spare minute I had." David McAllister, The Gallifreyan Buccaneer

"This is going to sound presumptuous but unless another author pulls out something very special, The Measurements of Decay could end up becoming the finest science fiction novel of 2018." Ian White, Starburst Magazine. 10/10

"Some initially murky plot details, such as how the protagonists link up, become clearer as the narrative continues, with many answers revealed in the enlightening--and outstanding--conclusion... An atypical and profound tale that readers won't easily forget." Kirkus Reviews

"The Measurements Of Decay... harks back to the genre classics with K K Edin's debut release proving a truly exceptional read. Taking his readers on a far-flung journey to the frontiers of science, it's rich in detail and masterfully paced leaving readers in no doubt that they are in the hands of a consummate storyteller with a superb imagination and vocabulary to match." Book Viral

"This is a novel of rare power and depth. It ought to be read by anyone who loves great writing and deep, serious meditations on where the human race is heading and how thoroughly the road to hell can be paved with professedly good intentions. The Measurements of Decay ought to be classed with the best novels of 2018, and one of the best science fiction novels of the century so far." Jeffrey Vail, Boston University IMPACT Book Review.

About the Author

K. K. Edin was born in New York City, and has lived in France, the United Kingdom and parts of the Middle East. He holds a B.A. in Political Science, a B.A. in Philosophy, and an M.A. in Philosophy from Boston University. He currently resides in the United States.

Find out more about the author and his books by visiting kkedin.com

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07B6N5B4N
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Metempsy Publications (March 25, 2018)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 25, 2018
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1299 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 590 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 173206220X
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.4 3.4 out of 5 stars 173 ratings

About the author

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K. K. Edin

K. K. Edin

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K. K. Edin was born in New York City in 1993, and has lived in France, the United Kingdom and parts of the Middle East. He holds a B.A. in Political Science, a B.A.and M.A. in Philosophy, and a J.D.. He currently resides in the United States.

Customer reviews

3.4 out of 5 stars
3.4 out of 5
173 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jvail
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best sci fi novels of the last 20 years
Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2020
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(A longer version of this review can be found in the Boston University College of General studies journal IMPACT, Vol. 9, no.1, Winter 2020)

The Measurements of Decay, the first novel by K. K. Edin, is an ambitious and brilliant work, a novel of ideas, centrally concerned with philosophy, technology, morality and the problem of free will.

Edin’s prose is daring, beautiful and against the grain of contemporary fiction. The closest stylistic parallel that I know of in recent decades is Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy, which itself is redolent of Melville’s style in Moby-Dick. In an era when fictional prose inclines toward the stripped-down, dumbed-down or babblingly hyper verbal, Edin’s writing is darkly baroque, lyrical and full of blood and thunder, while at the same time disciplined and polished. Whereas some readers accustomed to either bare-bones, matter-of-fact descriptions at one extreme or the undisciplined, manic prolixity of what the critic James Wood called “hysterical realism” at the other might find Edin’s prose difficult, lovers of nineteenth-century authors such as Poe, Dostoyevsky, De Quincey or Dickens will feel right at home. It is a joy to behold a young writer who is brave and brilliant enough to pull it off.

Though the future (and past and present) that Edin depicts is full of darkness and horrors, the novel is inspired throughout by a deeply humanistic vision. There is nothing fashionably fatalistic or nihilistic about this story. An underlying sympathy with and forgiveness of the sins and idiocies of humanity glows throughout the book. Edin has an Olaf-Stapledon-like ability to imagine even great species-wide disasters as mere episodes in a vastly longer timeframe, combined with an Aldous-Huxley-like urgent concern with the technologically accelerated decadence and degeneration of human culture. The narrator is philosophically literate, and Edin is confident enough in his readers to assume they will not be put off by references to Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, John Stuart Mill and so on. A dreamlike account of a descent into the tomb of Immanuel Kant in Kaliningrad’s Königsberg Cathedral is a turning point in the novel and a tour de force of surreal description. Edin has lived in several countries and cultures and effortlessly evokes the feel of Parisian hotels and Russian city streets. Other unforgettable sequences include a disturbing portrait of a nightmarish automated city of the future filled with fully degenerate humans; a shocking scene of brutality in a hotel cloakroom; and a terrifying final confrontation that reminded me of both the final canto of Dante’s Inferno and The Wizard of Oz.

This is a novel of rare power and depth. It ought to be read by anyone who loves great writing and deep, serious meditations on where the human race is heading and how thoroughly the road to hell can be paved with professedly good intentions. The Measurements of Decay ought to be classed with the best novels of 2018, and one of the best science fiction novels of the century so far.
7 people found this helpful
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Freemont DelRay
4.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing end but a magnificent read
Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2019
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I thought this was self serving drivel when I started. However. I was very wrong. This is a book dense with meaning and full of delicious descriptions. The end was not very satisfying., too obscure and not really a conclusion worthy of the build up. Still, a magnificent read.
3 people found this helpful
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Steve R
3.0 out of 5 stars A complex story
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2019
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It is evident from the beginning that the several main characters and their story lines will meet up at some point, but how that might happen and when is not so evident. To me, the events finally connecting them seem quite fractured and frankly unbelievable. The descriptive style of the author was hard to follow but mostly worth reading for the lofty questions raised.
3 people found this helpful
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Dana L. Culling
2.0 out of 5 stars A Cosmic Waste of Perfectly Beautiful Prose
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2019
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I really wanted to like this book. And, indeed, it is exquisitely written - which is why it gets two stars from me. Aside from the fluidity and mastery of its prose, it is absolute junk. The plot meanders and plods painfully slowly toward a nadir of nihilism and pointlessness, presenting some of the most unlikable characters I have encountered in fiction and placing them in impossibly horrible situations for seemingly no reason. I could feel little sympathy for any of them, despite the author's apparent glee at setting them each up for violent and cosmic failure. Scenes which should have taken only a few paragraphs to set up would ramble on for sometimes up to TEN PAGES, just so the author could interject tangentially related blobs of what amounts to a high-schooler's understanding of metaphysics - it felt as though this author was writing two separate books, and didn't quite know how to connect them into a compelling story. Edin's prose is genuinely lovely to read, but what would normally for me be a few days' read took me well over a month, because I kept having to put it down. It bored and frustrated me at the same time, and when I'd finally finished it, I felt I had wasted my time.
3 people found this helpful
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Carl Beaty
1.0 out of 5 stars Yikes
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2019
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I read, a lot, it is my number one pass-time, and I'm one of those people that just won't give up on a book no matter how much I'm not enjoying it, until I finish it. I also have never gone out of my way to delete a book from my Kindle library after having read it. This book, however was the exception to the rule. No, I didn't give up, I made it all the way through, but then immediately deleted it from my library. This was presented as a science fiction novel. It has a slight basis in a science fiction world. As in the backdrop to the story is science fiction, with space ships, and advanced technology, and things of that nature. But what this story really is, honestly, I'm not sure. It seems to be the authors exploration of all of the failed, defunct, and baseless philosophies of the past, blended into a story of a man who has gone so far off the rails that he never sees what sort of monster he has truly become. If you are a student of philosophy, and don't mind science fiction this book is likely going to be right up your alley, and honestly, it gets a lot of good reviews, so maybe give it a try. If you are simply a fan of science fiction, and enjoy a good, entertaining read, I would suggest you look elsewhere.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Kristaps
5.0 out of 5 stars Best sci-fi I've read in a long time!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2018
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As much as I don't like to admit it, I found out about this book through a sponsored post on Facebook. After reading the synopsis, I bought it without hesitation. I am a big fan of space opera so have been reading a lot of the work by guys like Alastair Reynolds, Peter F Hamilton and even James S. A. Corey. Thus the general vibe the description gave off immediately made me feel at home. But the philosophical aspect of the novel is something that I perhaps did not expect (at least to the extent philosophy is discussed in it). But I shouldn't be surprised. Galaxy spanning sci fi goes hand in hand with big ideas that aren't necessarily just to do with scientific development.

Without giving away too much, I will say that the story is gripping and the contemplations of the characters (and the profoundly disturbing narrator) are thought provoking. There is a nice balance between action packed sequences and deeply philosophical elaborations and the ending is tragically beautiful.

Beware though, this book is not an easy read, but oh how rewarding it is. I will be rereading it soon, perhaps after brushing up on some philosophy. If you google it (though I recommend doing it after reading the book), there is an interview with the author by someone from the American Philosophical Society which will point you towards some works that are relevant to the story here (especially if you're a bit philosophy ignorant like me) and may shed a new light on some of the ideas pursued by the characters. Yes, philosophy is a major plot device here.

I must also add that the prose is simply stunning. This was book was a joy to read. My only gripe with it could be some of the references in it going over my head. But that's mostly to do with my own ignorance.

10/10 would (will) read again!
4 people found this helpful
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Dr. T. Michael
1.0 out of 5 stars Unreadable - Bad grammar, poor description, excessive metaphor
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 5, 2018
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The synopsis of this book sounded fantastic, and all of the reviews said it was great. Imagine then my disappointment to find that it was basically un-readably bad.

The writer clearly thinks that putting several metaphors in every sentence is a great way to write. Don't get me wrong, metaphor is the essence of poetry and good writing, but I don't need to have five metaphors in every paragraph, especially when the protagonist is doing something as mundane as making telephone calls for job interviews. Added to that, there is so little plain description of what is happening, that the reader is struggling to understand what is going on.

In addition, there are basic grammar errors, such as changing between present and past tense in the *same sentence* which also make it unreadable. There has clearly been no editing process.

I wonder if the other reviews are fake? I will be seeking a refund for this book which is the first time I have ever considered doing this.
10 people found this helpful
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AS
5.0 out of 5 stars A book that deserves two readings
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 26, 2020
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Good science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, as Isaac Asimov once pointed out. This book presents to us the haunting possibilities of an "ocean of consciousness" extrapolated from the world today.

The events of the book artfully build up to the question: how do we recognize "the other"? As individuals we are estranged from each other, but the Narrator, in his uncanny presence throughout the story, shows us that this may not be the case forever.

I recommend this book to whoever is looking for a challenging, engaging sci-fi story; and recommend a second reading for anyone interested in the question of estrangement; and even causality in general.
One person found this helpful
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Karen E. Proctor
5.0 out of 5 stars Fiction at its best
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 10, 2018
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I was reading a blog recently about what made for good literary fiction. There are a lot of great covers out there and carefully penned book blurbs hailing the masterful use of language and thought-provoking explorations about the human condition but there are far too many that fail to meet expectations. Well, Measurements Of Decay isn’t one of them! Fast-paced with a tightly wound plot, complex characterisation and challenging theme it was one of my favourite reads of the year.
2 people found this helpful
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