Review
Author: Tim Wirkus
Title: The Infinite Future
Publisher: Penguin Press
Genre: Novel
Publication Date: 2018
Reviewed by Theric Jepson, August 2023
This could have different covers and attract different audiences. Some cool pulp cover with people approaching a mountain cabin while in the background a star battle rages. It could be a list of names (eg, The Infinite Future / starring Irena Sertôrian / in Household Tales of our Sertôrian / by Gretjen (?) Bombal / in The Agony and the Ecstasy of Sister Úrsula / by Sister Úrsula / by Eduard Salgado-MacKenzie / as created by the Cooper siblings / translated by Danny Laszlo / in The Infinite Future / by Tim Wirkus) in a delightful and pushy font treatment.
It’s a complicated book. But it largely has the conviction of its complications. Most of its run time is an introduction (by Laszlo) to a science-fiction story (by Salgado-MacKenzie) which makes up the last, oh, 40% of the book. The intro is largely designed to suggest that, for those who have eyes to see, Salgado-MacKenzie’s work is brilliant, potentially life-changing. If you have eyes to see.
It may take a while to sink in but I suspect I do not have eyes to see. I like the games Wirkus is playing here and the individual pieces are good but the introduction is simply much more enjoyable than the recovered text it introduces. The afterward works at crosspurposes to the intro, suggesting that those who find intense value in the text are probably wrong.
This isn’t me trying to tear the book down. I loved Wirkus’s first novel and I’m glad he’s still stretching himself, whether I loved it or not. Much hay was made in MoLit circles about the Mormon Studies character and rightly so. She’s a terrific creation. And the characters all are generally well constructed and lovely to spend time with. The science-fiction notions are wildly creative and delightful. I think if the surrounding text had spent less time both building them up and tearing them down they could have stood just fine on their own feet. In a way, this is like a Vonnegut novel chocked full of descriptions of Kilgore Trout novels and then the last, oh, 40% of the book had been a Kilgore Trout novel. Vonnegut made Trout a bad novelist. Wirkus made Salgado-MacKenzie a possibly great one and that’s tough to do. How do you write something better than yourself?
I know, I know, it’s really only supposed to be different (and because Laszlo wrote both, it doesn’t have to be that different). Although Laszlo’s afterword seems to swing far from the voice we’ve experienced throughout.
Anyway. It’s ambitious and interesting and I enjoyed it quite a lot. Who cares if it’s not a masterpiece?
And seriously. Put it in paperback with a hella pulpy cover and see what happens!