Toward Eternity (2024) by Anton Hur

 Book Review

Toward Eternity (2024)

by Anton Hur

  Before Toward Eternity was published last month I only knew Korean author Anton Hur as a translator of Korean Fiction into English.  Specifically his translation of Cursed Bunny, Bora Chung's 2021 collection of short stories, put him on my radar.  Thus, when I read that his debut novel was a mind bending work of science fiction, I had to have it and indeed I bought it during a recent visit to Powell's City of Books in Portland. 

   The plot starts out as a borderline philosophical inquiry into the nature of being: If you replace a sentient being molecule for molecule with something else (here the "something else" is called a "nanite"), is that new thing the same as the old sentient being, something different entirely, what?   Hur then abruptly shifts to a far future world where the sentient androids created by nanites have eradicated natural humanity- or close to it- the only thing standing between natural humanity and extinction being a dissident bloc of nanites who seek to preserve diversity in the universe.

   It is a...wild ride and a clear example of the result when speculative fiction and literary fiction collide.  I really enjoyed Toward Eternity and highly recommend it for the cosmic science fiction reader.