The Infinite Future

by Tim Wirkus

An exhilarating, original novel, set in Brazil, Idaho, and outer space, about an obsessive librarian, a down-at-heel author, and a disgraced historian who go on the hunt for a mystical, life-changing book--and find it.

The Infinite Future is a mindbending novel that melds two page-turning tales in one. In the first, we meet three broken people, joined by an obsession with a forgotten Brazilian science-fiction author named Salgado-MacKenzie. There's Danny, a writer who's been scammed by a shady literary award committee; Sergio, journalist turned sub-librarian in São Paulo; and Harriet, an excommunicated Mormon historian in Salt Lake City, who years ago corresponded with the reclusive Brazilian writer. The motley trio sets off to discover his identity, and whether his fabled masterpiece--never published--actually exists. Did his inquiries into the true nature of the universe yield something so enormous that his mind was blown for good?

In the second half, Wirkus gives us the lost masterpiece itself--the actual text of The Infinite Future, Salgado-MacKenzie's wonderfully weird magnum opus. The two stories merge in surprising and profound ways. Part science-fiction, part academic satire, and part book-lover's quest, this wholly original novel captures the heady way that stories inform and mirror our lives.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mormonism, Audiobook, Books About Books, LGBT

390 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 2018

About the author

T.I.M. Wirkus (they/them) is the author of the novels The Infinite Future (Penguin Press, 2018) and City of Brick and Shadow (Tyrus Books, 2014), which was a finalist for the Shamus Award and the winner of the Association for Mormon Letters Best Novel Award. Their novella, Sandy Downs, won the 2013 Quarterly West novella contest. They hold a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Southern California.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is like a set of Matrushka dolls moving further and further away from the author. Wirkus introduces us to a college acquaintance Danny Laszlo who talks of translating the obscure works of Brazilian science fiction writer Eduard Salgado-MacKenzie and the long journey to uncover his rumoured manuscript called The Infinite Future which is the story of a lesbian, galactic nun recounting the life of Irena Sertorian who was a character featured in Salgado-MacKenzie's work. You get all that?

They're all of them interpreters. We the reader are interpreting the text of course but each level reveals another sort of interpretation. Whether it's Laszlo working as a translator teasing out Salgado-MacKenzie's intent not to mention the interpretation of Salgdao-MacKenzie himself (just read the book). There's also the story of fellow Salgado-MacKenzie fan Harriet Kimball and her interpretation of Mormon text vs that of a more conservative Craig Ahlgren. Translator Laszlo also wrestles with his relationship to the Mormon faith - and I find that I don't think I've ever read anything that presents Mormons as reasonable characters of faith before.

But even that gets muddied when we are presented with a fictional, lesbian, historian, space-nun interpreting the actions of a recurring fictional Salgado-MacKenzie character named Irena Sertorian as a prophet figure who extends beyond the page into Laszlo's world - The Infinite Future promising to be no less than a unifying tract of almost religious import - which brings to mind L. Ron Hubbard and Scientologists. Which brings to mind our own interpretive baggage we bring as readers of these faith groups.

I'm not helping am I?

It's a lot to unpack and I have to admit that while it seemed unnecessarily recursive the ideas stick like that stray bit of popcorn stuck somewhere in your back molars that you can't seem to tease out. And I will give Wirkus props for his power pop bona fides - shout out to The New Pornographers! (though Electric Version will always top Twin Cinema for me)

[Joshua Whiting · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, there is finally such a thing as a unapologetically postmodern Mormon novel. (I mean other than The Book of Mormon itself, which kind of did polyphonic metafiction almost a century before it was cool.) Maybe contemporary metafiction like this has already been a thing in or around Mormondom and I just didn't know about it or recognize it as such. Either way, I feel like I missed the bus. I might feel a little bit jealous. (If you, reader of this review, are scoffing at my supposition that this is the first book of its kind in Mormon literature, and you’re thinking "What about title x and what about author y," please by all means share x, y, and z with me in a comment below. I actually want to be wrong and ignorant about this.)

For me, this book vibes with The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, new wave science fiction authors like Ursula K. Le Guin and Samuel R. Delany, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Moonglow by Michael Chabon, and probably a bunch of other awesome stuff I haven't read yet. In other words, if someone (or more likely nowadays some algorithm) were to conjure up a theoretical book that would most thoroughly match my reading tastes, interests, and cultural background, the kind of book I could see myself trying to write if I weren't too lazy and distracted to try to write a book, it would pretty much be this book. It wasn't perfect, but it exists and it is wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed it, which should be everything. Changing my rating to a 5, because if I can't give a 5 to a brilliant book that feels as if it was created just for me, since it isn't absolutely perfect, how can I have any hope or expectation for it to ever be repeated?

[Calla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished this. Excellent storytelling, great example of what you can achieve using fractalized plotting. Wirkus's characters lift off the page. Fun little book.

[Bon Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most unusual books I've ever read. It bounces you around like flipper ball, just when you have a good guess about direction it's heading, it kicks you in the head with another plot within plot within plot. For me, the execution (full production audiobook with whole assembly of narrators) had magnetic charm that pulled me in and kept me going, enjoying every second of it. Hard to describe, for some maybe even hard to read, but if you decide to give it a chance, audio is definitely the way to go. It's simply incredible.

[Glitterbomb]

Hello cover porn!

😂😂😂

[Loring Wirbel · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a semiotic meta-novel-within-novel begins with two Mormons on mission in Brazil, you know a unique reading experience is all but guaranteed. But when the telling of the tale brings to mind Paul LaFarge's The Night Ocean or The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, well, the fun just got multiplied. Wirkus doesn't want to provide an underlying sense of terror as LaFarge did with his backstory of H.P. Lovecraft - instead, The Infinite Future is a joyful tour de force about a quest for an elusive science fiction writer.

Sure, Wirkus has a few serious points to make along the way, regarding reform within the Mormon Church, and the tendency of humans to blindly follow leaders, but the lectures rarely get in the way of effective tale-spinning. In the same way that LaFarge works in decades of post-Lovecraft fandom in his novel, Wirkus builds a 60-year legend around Eduard Salgado-Mackenzie that carries us from 1950s pre-coup Brazil, up through the present era. And the legends involve everyone from dadaist and impressionist art movements to the CIA. Nice environment for such a slippery identity in the science-fiction scene.

If there's an Achilles Heel that takes this novel down to a weak four stars, it's that the legend of the unpublished novel (reprinted in part as the last one-third of this book), as well as the legend of space hero Irena Sertourian herself, somehow fail to live up to billing. In some sense, this should be no surprise - the perpetrators of literary fraud who are the late-arriving protagonists in this book warn that the efforts to create a religious aura around Sertourian always fell flat. But does this mean that Wirkus is trying to gently parody L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, Dick and his bizarre exegesis, or the Mormon Church itself? That's not really clear, but The Infinite Future book-within-book doesn't give us a good sense of why Sertourian should be sanctified, why Salgado-Mackenzie gained such a rabid fan-base, or whether we're just stuck with a Douglas Adams-style search for the meaning of life.

But what the heck. The vague conclusion, and the many ways it could be interpreted, does not make the book a misfire. The Infinite Future remains a good source of fun, even if the ridiculous outweighs the profound.

[Doug · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book, unfortunately, reminded me (a lot!) of Lafarge's The Night Ocean, and I had similar problems with it. To wit: it's a long winded diatribe concerning an esoteric text that much is made out of, but for which one would have to have an abiding interest in in the first place to find all the attending gobbledygook surrounding it of any interest. I was expecting/hoping for something more along the lines of The Saragossa Manuscript, or even Don Quixote, but alas, was sorely disappointed. Wirkus' first novel won some minor Mormon book award, and this, apparently is either an apologia for, or perhaps even a scathing takedown, of The Book of Mormon - not being all that familiar with such - other than regarding it as similar to Hubbard's Dianetics, i.e., an obviously fabricated bunch of fictional myths - whatever parallels it may contain to the metafictional book within the book here went right over my head.

What I did glean is that Wirkus appears no longer to be towing the Mormon party line, since one of the purported heroines of the novel is an excommunicated Mormon apostate, and one of the surrounding stories seems to champion a homosexual relationship, which is still anathema to the church. So perhaps I am just the wrong audience for this - it was fairly well-written on a technical level, and even though nothing in the multi-story lines enthralled me, I did keep going, despite thoughts of abandoning (space)ship a few times ... so there is that.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim Wirkus is a talented, smart, and well educated writer. If you like stories, this is the novel for you. The infinite Future is filled with framing devices to give the main plot line an air of credibility.

Highly entertaining and action packed, except for the one section where a character named Harriet discourses on her special field Mormonism, it is an effortless escapist read. It occurs to me that the various searches in the novel are satirizing Mormonism and maybe all religions with their beliefs of what happens after death and tenets about how to live a good life.

Some of the stories are reminiscent of Ulysses and his quest to return home following the Trojan War. In these stories, Captain Irina is featured. She is a fictional figure in some of the stories and in others regarded as the founder of a religion or a way to live.

A recounting of main plot and subplots would only serve to ruin the adventure of reading the novel for you.

[Natalie Dixon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay this book was fascinating, stories within stories within stories and connections and like the author self insert and that whole thing about mormonism. A lot going on! I started out a bit slow but once I actually sat down to read it I read it all pretty much in one day!

[LillyBooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Almost every blurb on the back of this book uses the word audacious, and, having read it, it's easy to see why. In fact, the sheer guts of writing and publishing this makes me want to give it three stars. But in the end, it comes across as only a lukewarm version of an experimental novel.

It's a story-wrapped-within-a-story tale, but Wirkus multiplies it several times so that it's a pulpy sci-fi short story wrapped in a vaguely religious sci-fi story wrapped in a memoir wrapped in a treasure hunt wrapped in another memoir wrapped in controversial Mormonism wrapped in a book proposal. I think. Anyway, even though each of these sections are told from a different point of view, they're all written the same. That's not to say they're written poorly, but A.S. Byatt it is not (no variation in tone, syntax, etc.). Still, Wirkus manages to hold the reader's attention with strangeness and curiosity if nothing else. I honestly had no idea where this book was going, but I wanted to find out. In fact, the innermost science fiction story is riveting and highly imaginative in its own right, and I would have gladly read a whole collection of those stories.

But here's the thing: we never do find where it's going. Remember when I said everything was all wrapped up in each other? Well, Wirkus apparently thought it would audacious to cut that burrito in half, so all but one (possibly two, but I genuinely couldn't tell) of those layers are missing their second half. In other words, we never find out how they end, or, more importantly, what they mean to the whole (I'm looking at you, lengthy out-of-context section on the devision over the role of women in the modern Mormon church). Instead, he choose some sort of truncated afterthought that breaks the fourth wall in a way I think we're supposed to believe is clever but actually comes across as self-serving.

[Ben]

DNF at 120 pages. There's a story here, I think, but it's buried under a lot of stuff that even the characters don't seem to be very invested in.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because it was unlike anything I've ever read before.
Seriously, what did I just read? It was so weird but believable and I'm still confused but I think I really liked the sci-fi stories, maybe, well okay, yes.

[Barbara McEwen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm, this was a mixed bag for me. There were definitely things I liked about the novel like any of the weird, sci-fi components and the whole stories within stories within stories thing. Other aspects kind of brought it down for me. I got tired of the Mormonism debate, surely we could have halved that part and still got the point. Maybe a plus for Mormons? It definitely got rambly at times, in general. There was also this oddity of people speaking to each other but not in a realistic way; describing the past in extreme detail that you would never remember or portray if you were actually talking to a person? There is probably a name for this I am too ignorant to know. Feel free to inform me if you can understand what I am getting at. Overall, it was interesting and I'm glad I read it for it's uniqueness.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so hard. I can't wait to write about it, so stay tuned.

[Allie Pae · Rating 3 out of 5]

i could not physically finish this book and i’m tired of it sitting on my reading list. the author wrote the crack dream of crack dreams

[David Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked Wirkus’s first novel, _City of Brick and Shadow_, and his second novel (this one) is likewise very good. The adjectives ‘novel’ and ‘quirky’ are the best ones I can think of to describe it. It's rare for me at this time in my life to find a book I just can't put down, but this is such a book. And I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

I agree with Robert, another Goodreads reviewer, that the scope of the story Wirkus tells here is probably much larger than the 390 pages allotted to it here. Had it been more on the order of 800 pages long, though, that may well have adversely impacted the reading experience for me.

The book is an interesting mix of science fiction and sociology, and it's fun to speculate on possible parallels between the two stories. Harriet Kimball, an excommunicated Mormon studies scholar, and Irina Sertôrian, a fictional spaceship captain and subject of religious devotion of the distant future, are perhaps the most obvious one in that they both find themselves trapped by authoritarian figures / organizations and both eventually escape. (Although one could perhaps argue about how successful Harriet's escape actually was.)

The ending of this novel works a bit like that of a French art film in that it comes when you are least expecting it and leaves you feeling somewhat perplexed. I may read the book again sometime in the future to look for clues to illuminate it. (Déjà vu! It seems to me I wrote the same thing after having finished Wirkus’s first novel.) But I wouldn't say that ruined the reading experience for me. I quite liked the book, and I highly recommend it.

[linds rubin · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was a meth fueled nightmare! i have extensive questions! it felt like a solid season of american horror story. i feel like if this were written by a woman it would have been like. AHS apocalypse! but instead it was a solid AHS freak show, you know? anyways. fuck the mormons but my heart goes out to the lesbian space nuns

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tend to like books that experiment with form and genre, especially when the experiment is successful. I do think The Infinite Future succeeds at what it sets out to do: There are stories within stories, narrators framing other narrators, in an exploration of what science fiction can mean for people. As a result, there are many different plots in this book, some more consequential than others, and some left unresolved.

Coincidentally, I started reading this book shortly after my first trip to Utah, which was my introduction to a predominantly Mormon society. That's the setting in which much of the framing narrative (outside of the Foreword) takes place. I was in Utah as a scholar, and I lectured about questioning questioning music history and treating classical composers as humans rather than God-like figures. There are scholar characters in the book who similarly question the history of their religions, so I found a few kindred spirits among the pages. It's especially fitting that such a coincidence would happen with this book, which invites the reader to find similarities between the different levels of narrative!

I recommend this book to anyone who likes genre-benders or enjoys references to classic, pulp-era science fiction. The heart of The Infinite Future is the relationship between readers and the characters they follow across several stories, whether in a religious text or sci-fi magazines--or a combination of the two.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Many goodreads reviewers seem to like the first part of the book more than the second. I don't know what book they are reading, but I'm going to have to disagree.

The first part of the book was terrible. The writing was on par with the skills of a decent but not exemplary high school student and I find it difficult to believe that no one involved in the publishing of the book could have figured out that the main narrator of the book has nothing to do with the book. Seriously, there were three characters to choose from and Wirkus chose the one without the story arc that ties the two sections together in a coherent novel. And its not like the character was interesting or sympathetic or at all necessary to the plot. He was just written in so that the book could be the "Great Mormon Novel" even though, unless I completely missed it, Wirkus doesn't actually offer up a firm commentary on the Mormon church. "It's complicated" isn't an opinion.

At its very worse, however, this section of the novel seems to be a vehicle for talking about all wonderful things he's interested in, but why would I care what Wirkus thinks about The Decemeberists or Jack White? Also, Don't bring up "The great Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges" unless you thing you can handle being compared to Borges.

Now, on to the second part of the novel, the sc-if manuscript.

It was fine. Actually, I kinda enjoyed it. The writing was much better and the story had a connecting theme. The characters were characters instead of mouthpieces for underdeveloped ideas and it allowed for a pretty cool pay-off at the end of the novel. I wish that Wirkus had written a novel length version of the science fiction book. It wouldn't have won any awards, but it would have been a passable sci-fi book.

[Scott]

I just didn't care anymore to finish this book. I couldn't resist trying though. I get excited for books about books. If not for that, I may have quit much earlier (I made it to the 75% mark). The first half was the three main characters hunting down the book. That story at times, especially once they were led to the elusive author, did grab my interest. However, these sections weren't as frequent as my interest would have liked, and at times, to me, the author got too sidetracked and lost the rhythm of the chase.

One other thing that felt confusing at times was the levels of narrative that was used. The book opens with a forward by someone with the same name as the author. Then it goes to one main character, who then switches to an email from the next main character, who then highlights an email from the third main character, who then highlights a letter from the author. There were many spots where the author did this. At times it felt like the movie "Inception" and I wasn't sure what level I was at anymore, mostly because the subject matter wasn't of interest to me.

The long lost science fiction novel, the second half of this book, the target of the three hunters, just wasn't of interest to me. Had it been on it's own, I'm sure the description would not have caught my attention enough to want to read it.

[Tanner · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm still not even sure the purpose or plot of this book...

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I absolutely loved this and found myself unable to put it down. From the other reviews it's obvious this may not be everyone's cup of tea but I think those that connect with the style and story are plunged into this tale.

Really wish there were more Sertôrian stories to read.

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book was complicated, thoughtful, and engaging—and utterly unexpected. It has been quite some time since I read something that had twists and turns I couldn’t have imagined. The characters were compelling as were some of the deeper puzzles the interwoven tales unravel.

[Daniel Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

What just happened? That's the end?

I mean, I think it was brilliant...or crazy? As in, crazy like a fox? I don't know. I don't know what I'm supposed to think. I was glued to the story--the stories--because they're good, and then after writing 40-odd stories within stories, suddenly Tim Wirkus decides to...drop his narrative mid-beat? I don't know what he's trying to do and maybe I need to think about it more...or maybe I'm just not sophisticated and deep enough.

Okay, let me back up. If I was Wirkus, or Danny, or Harriet, or Sergio, or any number of other characters, I would tell you in detail how I found the book, who handed it to me, and how I forgot to read it because I was rushing to work, but then I stumbled upon it later, and as I began to read became absorbed in the mysticism of the tale. And the fact is, I very much enjoyed "The Infinite Future." It's one of those story-within-a-story-within-a-story stories, and Wirkus spins out story after story as each person has to tell every other person "what happened" with a perfectly constructed tale, not the quick off-the-cuff type stories you and I tell around the water coolers, but the kind that you only find in a novel, complete with descriptions of the environment, clothes, emotions, etc. But it works. Wirkus is a fantastic and creative storyteller.

Interwoven into the story are elements of the LDS faith, the Book of Mormon, and the culture and religion of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It seems like Wirkus is grappling with the faith--maybe his faith?--and the contradictions and trials of faith that modern members of the LDS Church have to deal with. What's less clear, and perhaps this is part of his point, is whether Wirkus has a conclusion. To boot, the book is as much a look at the creative life, at writers, and at the conflict between pursuing one's passion and pursuing a solid and stable career, and I'm not sure if it's an ancillary theme, or intentionally woven in with the religious themes.

Whatever the intent, Wirkus tells compelling and interesting stories, each one worthy on its own. I was often reminded of a quote from Orson Scott Card when responding to a question about where he finds story ideas: "Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any." Wirkus is capturing a few more than the five or six that a good writer finds. He just can't settle on any one particular story. He wants to tell them all, and he wants to weave into all of them the same narrative.

And then, with all those great stories, Wirkus suddenly spins to a narrative denouement and drops the whole thing mid-beat, ending the story, the novel, the whole thing, in the middle of a story. It's a bit unnerving and unexpected (I was listening to it--it's a great audiobook), and I went back and checked three times that I hadn't accidentally missed something. But no, it had ended unexpectedly and somewhat unsatisfyingly.

Maybe this is the whole point, to leave the reader with a sense of the incomplete nature of many of life's questions. I don't know. I am still unsure what to think, but maybe that's what metafiction is all about, right?

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is weird and it is my kind of weird. It has an elaborate frame story where a recent BYU grad goes to Sao Paolo to research a book he's trying to write where a librarian introduces him to the work of an obscure pulp SF writer. Many of this SF writer's stories center around a Star-Trek-like captain, Sertorian. The writer and the librarian, along with a disgruntled Mormon historian, go on a research trip to find the original author. The second half of the book consists of a novel the trio finds about a nun who is writing about a Sertorian story, after Sertorian's tales have been made part of a religion.

I found myself sympathizing with the disgruntled Mormon historian character, and I was surprised when the narrator found her mini-lectures on Mormon history completely boring! I was like... tell me more! It was a good reminder that not all members of the LDS Church are interested in its history. The second half felt a little long in places but it brought up some really interesting issues. The frame story surrounding it made its rhetorical position difficult for me to understand, and I admit that I haven't completely unpacked why the in-book author wrote it that way. But I have thought about the story itself.

The nun discusses the in-story origin of the Sertorian stories: a secretary tells them to one person, who tells them to a soldier, who tells them to someone who collects them all. It's interesting how the science fiction analogue of scriptures makes it easier to abstract the meaning of holy writ--it's not so much the content of the story or whether or not it literally happened, but our interpretations that give it meaning. I'm also interested in the purpose of the Bulgakov apparatus--I would have liked more explanation for its existence, but as it is, it is an object lesson in fearing the unknown and especially the afterlife.

This would be a fun novel to discuss with a book club. I recommend it for people who like Steven L. Peck's works.

[Yossi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should really give this book 3.5 stars, but I'm feeling generous, so I'm going with 4 stars.
I am really conflicted about this book. All in all, I enjoyed the reading experience, but some things really annoyed me along the way:
1. This is touted as a science fiction book. It's not. It's a book with some pulp science fiction internal story.
2. The whole narrative within narrative becomes real old real fast. At a certain point, I realized that character A was narrating a story where character B was telling a story character C told it. Each story narration was presented as people talking but read as if a real writer wrote it (atmospheric description and all) which made it seem fictional.
3. The first part of the book is waay too long and starts being meandering after a while
4. The Mormon angle. What's that about?
5. The writer is too in love with his own writing and promotes it as world-shattering when in fact its nothing more than the standard written fare

The good:
I like the theological concept of a religion sprouting out of fictional characters. I always viewed any religion as a collection of fictional stories that have been turned to gospel

[Ariel Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half read as a sort of Hero’s Adventure. Told as a story within a story, it captured and held my attention until halfway through when it became straight sci-fi. I absolutely loved the depth of story layers; down and down I willingly fell. However, the sci-fi portion was entirely too long and detailed for my taste.

[Leigh Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Click here to read my review in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

[Andrew Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed the first part a lot. Very interesting, complex structure, characters. I need to go back and finish reading the novel-within-the-novel at the end at some point.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating story about looking for a book, it has Mormons and science fiction-- what more could you want? The end of the translator's story is weird but I liked the book anyway.