You're free to dislike the book, but this isn't a particularly accurate summation of Dark Matter. It feels forcibly reductive, like squinting hard enough to make two kind of similar things appear identical. Did you read the book, or just read a summary?

>!"working in a tech field" He's a college professor?!<

>!"mistaken identity/circumstance" Yeah, but when does this happen in Upgrade?!<

>!"injected with a substance" He's drugged? Just a regular old knock-out cocktail, not super sci-fi brain juice!<

>!"run away from shadowy organization" ??? He escapes a lab at one point, if that's what you mean?!<

>!"who am I?" I mean, kind of? The way the book questions "what makes a person who they are, their choices, or their experiences?" Again, though, pretty reductive.!<

>!"Sci-fi fuckery happens." "I miss <Wife> and <Child.>" These are accurate.!<

I haven't read Children of Time (thanks for the rec), but personally, Blake Crouch fills the Michael Crichton-shaped hole in my heart - i.e. smart, page-turning thrillers, based on high-concept (but digestible) premises. I loved both Dark Matter and Recursion (the latter a bit more than the former), but confess I was underwhelmed/disappointed by Upgrade.

What I love about those aforementioned novels is that they root their sci-fi high concepts squarely in the human experience - to the degree that the science working is actually dependent on human experience. I mean, the premise of Recursion is essentially >!time travel based on human memory!<. It can feel a little hand-waivey, but Crouch makes it just plausible enough to accept, and it keeps the reader engaged.

All of this to say, if you're looking for a particularly cerebral read that explores the far-reaching social/economic/cultural repercussions of technology, and holds a dark mirror to our current society, you're looking in the wrong place.