Toward Eternity: A Novel

by Anton Hur

Overview

*A PARADE, LITHUB, and CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS Best New Book. *An AUDIOFILE EARPHONES AWARD WINNER.

Negotiating the terrain of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, a brilliant, haunting speculative novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling translator that sets out to answer the question: What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal.

Literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun—himself a recipient of nanotherapy—mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears, the event raises disturbing questions. What happened to Yonghun, and though he’s returned, is he really himself anymore?

When Dr. Beeko, the scientist who holds the patent to the nanotherapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness from the machine into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive—and begin to replicate—their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.

Exploring the nature of intelligence and the unexpected consequences of progress, the meaning of personhood and life, and what we really have to fear from technology and the future, Toward Eternity is a gorgeous, thought-provoking novel that challenges the notion of what makes us human—and how love survives even the end of that humanity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063344488
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	07/09/2024
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	107,140
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Anton Hur was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and was subsequently raised in six different countries on four different continents, including British Hong Kong, Ethiopia, the United States, and Thailand, but spent most of his time in Korea. He has worked as an interpreter and translator for more than two decades, and in 2022, was double-longlisted and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, the first translator of color to do so. In 2023, his translation of Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny was shortlisted for the National Book Awards. He divides his time between Seoul and the science fiction-y island of Songdo with his husband. 

Editorial Reviews

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)

Publishers Weekly

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

"This intriguing book balances a tightly written, thought-provoking story about the terrifying consequences of new technology with musings on language, love, mortality and what it means to be human." — The Guardian

From the Publisher

★ 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

Library Journal

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.

Kirkus Reviews

Hur unburies both familiar and ancient history, geography, and language—a sprawling, crystalline, and deftly crafted vision of a yet unimaginable future.”

author of The Liberators E. J. Koh