One of those books that define why I read science fiction. The plot, where a signal is received, the decoding and speculation of which bounces around to many people, and around relatively a similar time an object impacts the moon, set the two, I would say, main protagonists on a collision course.

One is a guy named Jack, with wild pattern recognition skills, and who pioneers the way in which the signal is interpreted and proved—the other, Dana, the astronaut that is sent to explore the impact crater on the moon.

From there, the story just gets more interesting as it goes. Slowly diverging from what I would call, initially, a pretty fun possible first contact story (kind of like Contact, actually). The science is crunchy, but the information design is fantastic. The presentation of the book is the best I’ve probably ever consumed. I could liken it to something like The House of Leaves, because it’s mixed media and what is occurring in the fiction impacts the layout of the text in really fun and emergent ways. There’s numerous meta components that intrude. There’s fictitious scientific articles and reporting on what’s happening in the fiction being generated.

There’s so many types of layout and font, I’m absolutely certain it’s the most complex book I’ve seen on that front, including House of Leaves, which actually ends up being more-or-less child’s play, comparatively. The attention to detail is just incredible. Much like, say, The Blind Assassin, there’s also a classic scifi serial that’s disseminated, and used as a tense pacing mechanic, where it’s double column and layed out like a magazine. But the flow is never interrupted. It’s easy to actually consume and the meta context stuff, I found to be really fun and interesting. I’ve no clue if the science holds up, but for those parts of it that could be, it is presented credibly, via credible means, even in dialogue. This has by far the most compelling aspects of current technologies on conceptual space and augmented reality.

You could boil down my excitement for the consumption of the book to: It’s form meeting function without getting in the way of a classic science fiction story, but feels far more updated and current with science and the general intellect unit, in general. It’s a beautiful artifact of a book too. Even the hardcover has been customized itself, and the endpapers too, adding to the flavour. It’s just a staggering piece of work. And, best of all, it actually makes you think about humanity in a new, interesting light; it’s what science fiction so rarely do these days. It’s super saturated with same-similar ideas, and not feeling remotely updated for where we are headed as a species. Most of the time they don’t even acknowledge the difference between how we were as a people before and after the internet, which is contrived, to say the least. And that’s the starting point for a lot of science fiction. See the wildly popular Project Hail Mary of last year as an example. The difference in the quality of characters, themes, ideas, and execution is just night and day. This is absolutely a new all-time favourite of mine.