SINGER DISTANCE
WINNER OF THE OCTAVIA E. BUTLER AWARD FOR SCIENCE FICTION
“The most arresting science fiction novel in recent memory” - Foreword Reviews, STARRED review
“Soaring…structured perfectly…. Readers are in for a memorable adventure.” - Publishers Weekly, STARRED, BOXED review
“Chatagnier is a beautiful writer, and Singer Distance is filled with evocative passages that on their own are lovely to read. He also goes deep into the demands placed on those engaged in communicating with another planet, and how easily breakable the brilliant can be. The complicated, heartbreaking journey that Rick and Crystal undertake is both part of a science fiction story and completely separate. Altogether, this is a wondrous reading experience, a thoughtful and provocative encounter with literary artistry that is to be savored.” - Colleen Mondor, for Locus Magazine
“Ethan Chatagnier’s Singer Distance is one of the rarest and best kinds of novels: a truly thrilling story driven by big ideas and bold writing, whose gripping mysteries only deepen as the plot thickens. You won’t see the stars and the planets above the same way once you’ve experienced this unforgettable book. You won’t look at our Earth the same way either.”
—Matt Bell, author of Appleseed
"An achingly beautiful look at living in the shadow of genius, science, math, and loving the difficult to love. Chatagnier looks at the sky and people with equal wonder, and the result is deeply moving. Singer Distance is a book for readers of Sagan, lovers of paradoxes, anyone who has ever looked up. This truly gorgeous novel will live with me for a long time."
—Erika Swyler, author of Light from Other Stars
“Imaginative and brainy, this is a beautifully written book about one of my favorite subjects: extraordinary possibilities.”
—Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Dreamers
"An inventive and heartfelt novel about the search to understand both the universe and ourselves. The best sort of mystery, one with big ideas at its center. "
—Kate Hope Day, author of In the Quick
"Singer Distance pulled me in from the very first page. I fell in love with the characters—who are full of mettle, vitality, and human chaos—and the audacity of the book's alternate history, wherein contact has been made with a civilization on Mars, but that contact leaves humanity with more questions than answers about the nature of the universe. This book is a love song to our desire for understanding, the scientific drive for progress, and the thread of faith that runs through both. An outstanding debut novel."
—Adrienne Celt, author of End of the World House
"Singer Distance is a surprising, captivating, surpassingly intelligent novel, and I mean it as a great compliment when I say that I'm not quite sure where it came from. The narrator who leads us through its pages insists that he is one of the world's carpenters rather than one of its architects, but the reality that surrounds him is extraordinary, and so too, therefore, is his story. On the macroscale, it's a story about the interpersonal pathways that connect one planet to another and the interplanetary gaps that separate one heart from another; on the microscale, about what it feels like to occupy a single life, and how difficult it is to tell, when you're in the middle of it, whether that life is being wasted or fulfilled."
—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations
“Reading Ethan Chatagnier's Singer Distance was like looking up to the night sky and spotting a new constellation. A beautiful history from a timeline just next to ours, it hums with the excitement of knowing that we cannot possibly be alone in the universe — or in our Earth-bound lives. I never wanted it to end, even as I couldn't put it down. The book brought some much-needed hope and joy and care in these all-too-dark modern times.”
—Drew Broussard, events director at The Golden Notebook bookstore and podcaster at LitHub
Singer distance
For fans of Station Eleven and Light from Other Stars, Ethan Chatagnier’s propulsive, genre-bending debut novel asks: what happens when we discover intelligent life just next door? And what does it really mean to know we’re not alone in the universe?
The odds of the planet next door hosting intelligent life are―that’s not luck. That’s a miracle. It means something.
In December 1960, Crystal Singer, her boyfriend Rick, and three other MIT grad students take a cross-country road trip from Boston to Arizona to paint a message in the desert. Mars has been silent for thirty years, since the last time Earth solved one of the mathematical proofs the Martian civilization carved onto its surface. The latest proof, which seems to assert contradictory truths about distance, has resisted human understanding for decades. Crystal thinks she’s solved it, and Rick is intent on putting her answer to the test―if he can keep her from cracking under the pressure on the way. But Crystal’s disappearance after the experiment will set him on a different path than he expected, forever changing the distance between them.
Filled with mystery and wonder, Ethan Chatagnier’s Singer Distance is a novel about ambition, loneliness, friendship, exploration, and love―about how far we’re willing to go to communicate with a distant civilization, and the great lengths we’ll travel to connect with each other here on Earth.
Publishing on October 18, 2022.
Available for pre-order now wherever books are sold. Extra thanks if you order from your favorite indie bookstore now (or, from one of mine: https://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/book/9781953534439)