Invisible Things

Locations
Call Number: Science Fiction / Johnson, Mat, Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Johnson, Mat
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Science Fiction / Johnson, Mat	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Johnson, Mat	4-week checkout	Due 05-23-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Johnson, Mat	4-week checkout	Due 05-09-2024

"The Delany, captained by a swashbuckling capitalist named Bob, is circling Europa--one of the moons of Jupiter--studying its atmosphere, but inside, the ship is divided into two warring camps. First there are the group of "Bobs" who slavishly follow the ship's vain, ignorant captain and who antagonize the two crew members who've run afoul of the Bobs: Dwayne and Nalani, who are studying the surface of the moon itself. But it is Dwayne and Nalani who make the ship's one and only discovery--and it's a doozy: One of their drones returns pictures of what appears to be a normal American city enclosed in a dome with a crack in its roof. When the Delany crew steers their ship closer to investigate they find themselves pulled into the domed city: New Roanoke, a city made up of generations of UFO abductees from earth, whose society is a funhouse mirror of the United States. Nalani, Dwayne, and the Bobs find themselves in the middle of an election in New Roanoke--one that hinges on the question of whether or not its inhabitants should return to Earth. The planet's dome has been cracked and is likely to crumble, its residents are terrorized by "invisible things" that toy with them--slapping them, dragging their bodies around, and sometimes smashing their skulls--and their whole society is haunted by a central mystery: Why are they there? We follow Nalani through this mirror world of our own and into the same questions of polarized politics, existential crisis, and environmental omens that obsess and divide our own. Will New Roanoke survive? Will we?"-- Provided by publisher.

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Serious and humorous submitted by redwood on July 20, 2022, 8:29am Invisible Things takes place in a near future where America is like the one we live in but a little more intense, and largely on a bubble on Europa which contains a society that’s like that America, but a little more intense. Americans are mysteriously kidnapped and taken there against their own will and need to figure out how to integrate themselves into the deeply stratified society, a pattern disrupted when one mission manages to land there on purpose. It’s heavyhanded as allegory but doesn’t feel like a slog because it remains hilarious even as horrible things happen—and has an ending that feels perfectly hopeful for a hopeless time. Tonally, the novel managed to feel both deeply present and like an escape—which is probably what I needed this summer.