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This Moonless Sky
My brief life on Earth had been a mess. The metallic aliens had rescued me when I was trying to kill myself. But after a 400,000-year, deep-frozen move across space, and two years of relaxed student life on the moonless planet Vweialer, I was doing well. I wasn’t expecting any more surprises. Haha. Then the aliens returned, bearing a young man who was unusually interested in getting to know me. This was the beginning of an astonishing, epic journey into love and danger in lands where I might be enslaved, jailed, starved – or worshipped as a god. And through it all, I found humour and revelation – and drove ever deeper into the heart of what it means to be alien. If you decide to read my true story, I give you fair warning. You may become alien too. Seriously. Our famous author here said, “This moonless sky is the mind of someone else.” When you understand that line, it will never leave you.
1150 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 10, 2013
5 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 2, 2021
Okay, wow. I’ve just finished ‘This Moonless Sky’ by Mark Rogerson and I’m overwhelmed. It is rare to finish reading a book, a long book, and be compelled to read it again from the start.
TMS is a journey in three parts, set thousands of years in the future, on a world like our own in many ways, a world that has been seeded with human populations by a race of intelligent machines called Communicators. The repopulated humans have brought the best, and the worst, of Earth’s politics and religions with them.
The book is narrated by Marrik, a boy who attempts suicide on earth and who is rescued by the Communicators. As Marrik travels across this new world in the company of his boyfriend Yith and their other friends, there are many adventures and interactions with these contrasting human cultures which gives the author time and space to articulate their philosophy of love and acceptance.
To have a gay love story at the centre of the book is refreshing and welcome. And yet TMS is so much more; it is part philosophical treatise, part religious response, it is a linguistic treasure trove, it is Adventure Time on acid, and it is a damn good story in its own right.
‘Where does art end and life begin?’ is one of the quotes that I will take away from this book. TMS is one of those books where art and life are co-mingled. Because of the length of the book and the immersive nature of the prose, the closest comparisons that I can make are ‘The Stand’ by Stephen King, ‘Jerusalem,’ by Alan Moore, ‘His Dark Materials’ by Philip Pullman… not in subject matter, but because I felt bereft at the end of the book that a pilgrimage had come to an end.
The reflection on religion and faith are fascinating, especially in the context of sexuality. ‘I our culture, we hold that no verbal construction, even scripture, can be sufficient to fully represent God or God’s creation,’ Rogerson writes in a key scene. The joy of TMS is that I found myself having to research other subjects (for example Late Bronze Age Collapse) to fully understand some of references, which made reading a long book even longer… the sheer amount of knowledge, intelligence, life experience and compassion condensed in this book make it a book to treasure. ‘You’ve rescued me from the worst type of knowledge – bending political falsehood, the type that’s intended to do good’ Yith tells Marrik, and we have Rogerson to thank for doing the same for us.
Lectonts, paralectonts, interrappellant, capita language, vorticate, arbitrat, vortex language, negative currency, self-modifying entities in a modifiable system… I’m not sure I understand all of the concepts but what I do intend is to keep rereading the book until I do.
Any review cannot do justice to the book itself, and I can’t praise This Moonless Sky highly enough: it is sexy, witty, challenging, compassionate. The last few lines of the book (prior to the two epilogues) summarise the author’s approach, ’You’ve been very kind. You’ve read to the end. It’s the love I have for people that’s compelled me to write this… if you’ve decided, as you read along, to love me back, or at least accept me as I am, I’m really grateful: I’m your friend forever.’
This reader loves you back and accepts you as you are, Marrik, and I’m grateful for your friendship, and for a book that should be made into a Netflix TV series or a spellbinding movie trilogy… if there are any film makers out there looking for an amazing, genre redefining script… they’ve got one here.
Thank you, Mark Rogerson for This Moonless Sky, for your art that has become part of my life.
TMS is a journey in three parts, set thousands of years in the future, on a world like our own in many ways, a world that has been seeded with human populations by a race of intelligent machines called Communicators. The repopulated humans have brought the best, and the worst, of Earth’s politics and religions with them.
The book is narrated by Marrik, a boy who attempts suicide on earth and who is rescued by the Communicators. As Marrik travels across this new world in the company of his boyfriend Yith and their other friends, there are many adventures and interactions with these contrasting human cultures which gives the author time and space to articulate their philosophy of love and acceptance.
To have a gay love story at the centre of the book is refreshing and welcome. And yet TMS is so much more; it is part philosophical treatise, part religious response, it is a linguistic treasure trove, it is Adventure Time on acid, and it is a damn good story in its own right.
‘Where does art end and life begin?’ is one of the quotes that I will take away from this book. TMS is one of those books where art and life are co-mingled. Because of the length of the book and the immersive nature of the prose, the closest comparisons that I can make are ‘The Stand’ by Stephen King, ‘Jerusalem,’ by Alan Moore, ‘His Dark Materials’ by Philip Pullman… not in subject matter, but because I felt bereft at the end of the book that a pilgrimage had come to an end.
The reflection on religion and faith are fascinating, especially in the context of sexuality. ‘I our culture, we hold that no verbal construction, even scripture, can be sufficient to fully represent God or God’s creation,’ Rogerson writes in a key scene. The joy of TMS is that I found myself having to research other subjects (for example Late Bronze Age Collapse) to fully understand some of references, which made reading a long book even longer… the sheer amount of knowledge, intelligence, life experience and compassion condensed in this book make it a book to treasure. ‘You’ve rescued me from the worst type of knowledge – bending political falsehood, the type that’s intended to do good’ Yith tells Marrik, and we have Rogerson to thank for doing the same for us.
Lectonts, paralectonts, interrappellant, capita language, vorticate, arbitrat, vortex language, negative currency, self-modifying entities in a modifiable system… I’m not sure I understand all of the concepts but what I do intend is to keep rereading the book until I do.
Any review cannot do justice to the book itself, and I can’t praise This Moonless Sky highly enough: it is sexy, witty, challenging, compassionate. The last few lines of the book (prior to the two epilogues) summarise the author’s approach, ’You’ve been very kind. You’ve read to the end. It’s the love I have for people that’s compelled me to write this… if you’ve decided, as you read along, to love me back, or at least accept me as I am, I’m really grateful: I’m your friend forever.’
This reader loves you back and accepts you as you are, Marrik, and I’m grateful for your friendship, and for a book that should be made into a Netflix TV series or a spellbinding movie trilogy… if there are any film makers out there looking for an amazing, genre redefining script… they’ve got one here.
Thank you, Mark Rogerson for This Moonless Sky, for your art that has become part of my life.
March 11, 2017
This book is for people that like science and different languages because In this amazing book. And it's got a lot of different plots and characters that build over the time of the book and spoiler alert but one of the main characters dies. And if you love aliens and stuff like that this is the book for you I felt like I was in the book while reading this amazingly written book
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews