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?
We’re thrilled to share the cover of Singer Distance, a genre-bending novel by Ethan Chatagnier—publishing October 18, 2022 with Tin House.
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, 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.
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Singer Distance
Ethan Chatagnier is the author of the story collection Warnings from the Future (Acre Books, 2018). His stories have appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Georgia Review, New England Review, and other journals, and have been awarded a Pushcart Prize and listed as notable in the Best American Short Stories. He lives in Fresno, California, with his family.
