The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time

I bought this book because I went to Montauk. I had previously only known it as the setting of a couple episodes of Friends, but then I took Annie on a work trip to The Hamptons, and we spent a day with some friends in Montauk, visiting the lighthouse and doing the tourist stuff there.

Off in the distance from the lighthouse, you can see a big radar dish. This was part of a Cold War defensive radar network and it’s the only one left standing (apparently a lot of ships used it as a landmark, despite the fact that there’s literally a lighthouse right there…)

By looking into that radar dish, I was introduced to the world of The Montauk Project. This is a series of novels (or is it…) that presents an alternate reality where the U.S. government did time travel experiments at the military base that used to sit under that radar dish.

This is the first book in the series, and, man, it’s weird. It’s written in the first person, but as a “recollective” style, like someone who is trying to record all their thoughts for posterity. It’s supposedly a journal of some kind, written by a scientist who investigated the Montauk Project after the fact. It presents a supposed timeline of everything that occurred.

And this is where it gets weird, because there are some people who apparently believe this is all true. The book series has created a lore that crosses the line from fiction into reality. There is apparently an entire subculture behind this.

It’s a very short book, and seems content to just describe weird situations and let them hang out there with no resolution. The idea is that later books in the series would pick up from these and expanded them, as if this first book is nothing but grand scene-setting and world-building.

Again, it’s weird, and kinda creepy, and if you’re looking for something with a tight storyline that wraps up neatly… well, this ain’t it. I won’t be continuing the series.

(However, this is apparently the fiction series that serves as the basis for the TV show Stranger Things, which I have no watched, but that I know is beloved by many.)

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