Author: Tim Wirkus
Title: The Infinite Future
Publisher: Penguin Press
Date: 2018
Reviewed by Rachel Helps
This book is weird and it is my kind of weird. It has an elaborate frame story where a recent BYU grad goes to Sao Paolo to research a book he’s trying to write where a librarian introduces him to the work of an obscure pulp SF writer. Many of this SF writer’s stories center around a Star-Trek-like captain, Sertorian. The writer and the librarian, along with a disgruntled Mormon historian, go on a research trip to find the original author. The second half of the book consists of a novel the trio finds about a nun who is writing about a Sertorian story, after Sertorian’s tales have been made part of a religion.
I found myself sympathizing with the disgruntled Mormon historian character, and I was surprised when the narrator found her mini-lectures on Mormon history completely boring! I was like… tell me more! It was a good reminder that not all members of the LDS Church are interested in its history. The second half felt a little long in places but it brought up some really interesting issues. The frame story surrounding it made its rhetorical position difficult for me to understand, and I admit that I haven’t completely unpacked why the in-book author wrote it that way. But I have thought about the story itself.
The nun discusses the in-story origin of the Sertorian stories: a secretary tells them to one person, who tells them to a soldier, who tells them to someone who collects them all. It’s interesting how the science fiction analogue of scriptures makes it easier to abstract the meaning of holy writ–it’s not so much the content of the story or whether or not it literally happened, but our interpretations that give it meaning. I’m also interested in the purpose of the Bulgakov apparatus–I would have liked more explanation for its existence, but as it is, it is an object lesson in fearing the unknown and especially the afterlife.
This would be a fun novel to discuss with a book club. I recommend it for people who like Steven L. Peck‘s works.