... an exquisite first contact novel in which interplanetary communications expose the infinite and infinitesimal distances between human hearts ... Directed by scientific and mathematical wonder, a sense of the poetry of the universe and its untapped dimensions, and by the searing yearning of committed love: Singer Distance is the most piquing and arresting science fiction novel in recent memory. It poses questions about entropy, metaphysics, and humanity’s place among the stars alongside explorations of the bonds between people, which it renders just as pertinent. Its turns are both intelligent and magical, and its surprises are heartbreaking and boundary-testing. As Rick, Crystal, and their ever-inquisitive colleagues learn after painful seasons of searching: true communication, even on interplanetary and interspecies scales, requires art and heart, just as much as it does ingenuity.
... imaginative ... Blending mathematics, theoretical physics, philosophy, and passion, Chatagnier has concocted a compelling science fiction yarn that will also appeal to general fiction readers.
A compelling bildungsroman, set in a fictional past, that examines the interplay of obsession and personal relationships and reads like Jaroslav Kalfar’s Spaceman of Bohemia meets Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow in its intersection of alternate space history, alien life, and singing.
... soaring ... Chatagnier does an excellent job channeling the hippie students’ grit, joy, and constant self-awareness ... The elements of astronomy, numerology, love, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life are structured perfectly as each of the five commit to their 'long-shot missions and desperate hopes.' Readers are in for a memorable adventure.
Chatagnier describes the scenery of the American past with lyrical zest, but he doesn’t seem to have devoted much effort to imagining or researching what people’s lives were like back then. In his fantasy version of the novel’s timeline, unlike the same period on actual Earth, women, including women of color, are allowed to be mathematicians and scientists just like men. Women in his novel run telescopes and are professors at prestigious universities in more than token numbers ... For all the charm of these wistful musings, the plot makes little sense. (How has Crystal been supporting herself? Why hasn’t some reporter found her long ago?) And the novel’s ultimate revelation, when it comes, is a cliché ... Lyrical writing and a suspenseful story fall apart when anachronisms and lazy plotting undermine them.
It is perhaps a misfortune for Mr. Chatagnier to have published this book in the same year as Cormac McCarthy’s tandem novels about a schizophrenic female math genius. But Singer Distance is a much smaller and sweeter production, more romantically attracted to the discovery of a new mathematical system for understanding intimacy and communication.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
