Blog | Eric Hendel

(Cover Artist: Kaitlin Kall ) One of the most unusual things about Hank Green's 2018 novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is that the book is not a comedy. At its core, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a very straight-faced, high-concept science fiction story charting humanity's first-contact with an alien intelligence, and the social and political upheaval this event brings. As a result, as is often the case with other stories in this genre, the driving element of Green's plot is a very carefully imagined examination of how the contemporary world might react to the arrival of something that by its basic nature requires we rethink our place in the universe. However, what Green understands about this material is that first-contact stories thrive not by their realism, but by their absurdity. As a genre, alien first-contact narratives derive much of their tension from how they depict an otherwise realistic world reacting to the arrival of something that defies all conventi...

Arrival by Ted Chiang

The most striking quality of the stories appearing in Ted Chiang's anthology Arrival (which was originally published in 2002 under the title Stories of Your Life and Others ) is the author's ability to use fiction as a rhetorical device. By saying this I don't mean that Chiang's work is comprised only of messages which he seeks to impart upon his audience, or even that his stories explicitly take the form of moral/ethical parables aimed at demonstrating some kind of lesson to his readers. Rather, it's more that throughout this collection, Chiang produces fiction which often strives to explore the tension that exists between two or more subtly contradictory ideas, examining various perspectives on his subjects through the medium of narrative. Via stories as diverse as a very contemporary-minded retelling of a biblical parable, an alien first-contact story that touches on themes of predestination and free will, and a fictional documentary about the ethics of limiti...

Strange Horizons Review of Nikhil Singh’s Dakini Atoll

(Cover Artist: Elena Romenkova ) A review I wrote of Nikhil Singh's novel Dakini Atoll is currently up in the most recent edition of Strange Horizons . This book was a very complex and fascinating story that skips between several different interconnected narratives, all of which are ultimately woven together into a work exploring themes of mass media and the nature of human awareness. The main storyline follows an actress named Delilah Lex, who as the novel opens realizes she has become trapped within the simulated reality of the television program she currently stars in (a virtual TV show called " Good Morning Delilah! "). However, this surreal narrative is also interspersed with the experiences of Anita--a corporate agent working for a quasi-religious organization called "Angelinc." There is also a storyline following a friend of Delilah's--a movie director named Fortunato who unexpectedly becomes drawn into an investigation of a mysterious global plague,...