Publishers Weekly
05/27/2024
Translator Hur debuts with an ambitious and mostly successful story of human life transformed by technology. The novel begins in the near future, when a breakthrough treatment called nanotherapy replaces a terminally ill patient’s body with an immortal replica. In a journal, Dr. Mali Beeko, whose mother invented the procedure, records her misgivings after the first nanotherapy patient, a lover of 19th-century poetry named Yonghun Han, vanishes from a South African lab and reappears days later in the same place. Upon his return, Yonghun finds Mali’s journal and begins writing in it, confessing that he’s not the “real” Yonghun, even though he possesses Yonghun’s memories. Over the following decades nanodroids become common and AI is used for decision-making in military strategy. Though Hur’s worldbuilding occasionally feels unwieldy, the final sections are worth the wait, as nanodroids read Yonghun’s journal entries about poetry and consider the impact of art on humanity. Fans of Anthony Doerr and Emily St. John Mandel ought to take a look. (July)
From the Publisher
Anton Hur emerges as one of the most exciting translators, and now authors, of our generation. Toward Eternity develops a surreal and subversive terrain of nanite swarms, exploding memories, and symphonic poetry. Hur unburies both familiar and ancient history, geography, and language—a sprawling, crystalline, and deftly crafted vision of a yet unimaginable future.” — E. J. Koh, author of The Liberators
“Anton Hur is a genius and this book is a fast, fun, and smart read. An exploration of language, AI, and what it means to be human, TOWARD ETERNITY is a terrific debut from a fearless writer and acclaimed translator." — Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder
"Hur is first and foremost one of our best writers. This chilling gem of speculative fiction is written with the restrained elegance and dazzling precision of an expert who can bend, tone, and ultimately alchemize language into a truly singular storytelling experience. You'll never look at the intersections of poetry and biology, and art and technology, the same again. What a delight to witness a writer in complete control of his craft, to experience the thrills of invention as unforgettable as the most canonical cautionary tales of the genre." — Porochista Khakpour, author of Tehrangeles and Sick: A Memoir
"[A] moving, philosophical exploration of what it means to be alive. Hur asks whether the self can exist beyond biology and memory, whether souls can be made rather than born, and whether the most enduring part of humanity might be as ethereal a concept as love....Hur’s thought-provoking novel will appeal to readers who love gripping metaphysical science fiction, such as Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Memory or Robert J. Sawyer’s Calculating God." — Library Journal (starred review)
"National Book Award–finalist Hur is deservedly the Korean-to-English translator of choice. Language, unsurprisingly, drives his spectacular, speculative debut novel....Hur creates with expansive erudition harnessing science, technology, history, landscapes, culture; his world building is brilliant and boundless." — Booklist (starred review)
"[A]n unfailing affirmation of the persistence of love and art, even in the face of oblivion, one that tells us 'it’s the story you write that is you.' A novel that traces humanity’s journey from what we imagine ourselves to be to what’s next." — Kirkus Reviews
“Wonderful….A fascinating cast of characters….Toward Eternity displays a deep and subtle care for language….. I mentioned Egan, and was also reminded of Charles Stross’s Accelerando and Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway. Although profoundly divergent in style, Toward Eternity makes an interesting companion to Ben Berman Ghan’s The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits, another recent speculative and poetic work on identity, AI, and far-future visions…. Toward Eternity has an insistence on persistence that’s intensely human even when its characters have moved beyond that category.” — Locus
author of The Liberators E. J. Koh
Hur unburies both familiar and ancient history, geography, and language—a sprawling, crystalline, and deftly crafted vision of a yet unimaginable future.”
Library Journal
★ 06/01/2024
DEBUT Hur, often award-nominated for his enthralling translations from Korean, crafts his own novel that is intensely focused on the power of language. It begins with a disappearance. New technology can replace human cells with nanites, saving people from life threatening diseases and, potentially, granting immortality. The second person to undergo this nanodroid process lives for decades, until the day he vanishes between one step and the next. A scientist who's intimately tied to this research begins to investigate, hiding her observations in a notebook. From then on, the characters skip across countless years, recording stories of their conflicts with technology, identity, and poetry as they pass the notebook along. Their struggles coalesce into a moving, philosophical exploration of what it means to be alive. Hur asks whether the self can exist beyond biology and memory, whether souls can be made rather than born, and whether the most enduring part of humanity might be as ethereal a concept as love. VERDICT Hur's thought-provoking novel will appeal to readers who love gripping metaphysical science fiction, such as Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Memory or Robert J. Sawyer's Calculating God.—Matthew Galloway
Kirkus Reviews
2024-05-04
Letters from humankind and our descendants weave together a story of love, robots, and poetry.
“Poetry is different from fiction, it’s not about story, it’s about becoming someone else,” explains one of the leads in this thoughtful speculative experiment. In it, translator Hur tackles the existential questions posed in Blade Runner but finds answers (and a title) in Emily Dickinson. The novel opens on a crisis in South Africa, as researcher Mali Beeko wonders why one of her most important patients has disappeared. In this near-future, a chosen few have been rescued from early deaths by scientists who systematically replace every diseased cell in their bodies with a bioengineered healthy cell using nanites. This alone would be a cool way to ponder the Ship of Theseus, a philosophical exercise that questions the nature of identity when a person or object is replaced, but the experiment just keeps going. First, over time, the patients themselves becomes influential. Ellen Van der Merwe is a classical cellist whose terrible fate will only become clear later, while Yonghun Han is a literary researcher who uses his extra years to create an AI called Panit, or “Beloved,” as a way to stay close to his late husband. Leaning more on literary discovery than hard SF tropes, the story is extrapolated to the far future by transposing Panit into an android body, followed inevitably by a war between the evolving androids (all reproductions of Ellen) and what people remain. That’s a big idea, but the narrative here is more interested in who we are than who wins. It’s a sad story, but Hur uses its disquieting ideas to sweet effect. It’s an unfailing affirmation of the persistence of love and art, even in the face of oblivion, one that tells us “it’s the story you write that is you.”
A novel that traces humanity’s journey from what we imagine ourselves to be to what’s next.
