The Infinite Future
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15
Ratings1
Average rating3
An exhilarating, original novel, set in Brazil, Idaho, and outer space, about an obsessive librarian, a down-at-heel author, and a disgraced historian who go on the hunt for a mystical, life-changing book--and find it. The Infinite Future is a mindbending novel that melds two page-turning tales in one. In the first, we meet three broken people, joined by an obsession with a forgotten Brazilian science-fiction author named Salgado-MacKenzie. There's Danny, a writer who's been scammed by a shady literary award committee; Sergio, journalist turned sub-librarian in São Paulo; and Harriet, an excommunicated Mormon historian in Salt Lake City, who years ago corresponded with the reclusive Brazilian writer. The motley trio sets off to discover his identity, and whether his fabled masterpiece--never published--actually exists. Did his inquiries into the true nature of the universe yield something so enormous that his mind was blown for good? In the second half, Wirkus gives us the lost masterpiece itself--the actual text of The Infinite Future, Salgado-MacKenzie's wonderfully weird magnum opus. The two stories merge in surprising and profound ways. Part science-fiction, part academic satire, and part book-lover's quest, this wholly original novel captures the heady way that stories inform and mirror our lives.
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The story is like a set of Matrushka dolls moving further and further away from the author. Wirkus introduces us to a college acquaintance Danny Laszlo who talks of translating the obscure works of Brazilian science fiction writer Eduard Salgado-MacKenzie and the long journey to uncover his rumoured manuscript called The Infinite Future which is the story of a lesbian, galactic nun recounting the life of Irena Sertorian who was a character featured in Salgado-MacKenzie's work. You get all that?
They're all of them interpreters. We the reader are interpreting the text of course but each level reveals another sort of interpretation. Whether it's Laszlo working as a translator teasing out Salgado-MacKenzie's intent not to mention the interpretation of Salgdao-MacKenzie himself (just read the book). There's also the story of fellow Salgado-MacKenzie fan Harriet Kimball and her interpretation of Mormon text vs that of a more conservative Craig Ahlgren. Translator Laszlo also wrestles with his relationship to the Mormon faith - and I find that I don't think I've ever read anything that presents Mormons as reasonable characters of faith before.
But even that gets muddied when we are presented with a fictional, lesbian, historian, space-nun interpreting the actions of a recurring fictional Salgado-MacKenzie character named Irena Sertorian as a prophet figure who extends beyond the page into Laszlo's world - The Infinite Future promising to be no less than a unifying tract of almost religious import - which brings to mind L. Ron Hubbard and Scientologists. Which brings to mind our own interpretive baggage we bring as readers of these faith groups.
I'm not helping am I?
It's a lot to unpack and I have to admit that while it seemed unnecessarily recursive the ideas stick like that stray bit of popcorn stuck somewhere in your back molars that you can't seem to tease out. And I will give Wirkus props for his power pop bona fides - shout out to The New Pornographers! (though Electric Version will always top Twin Cinema for me)
