SINGER DISTANCE

Winner, CALIBA Golden Poppy Book Award in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category

SINGER DISTANCE is a compelling read, and Rick Hayworth is an engaging narrator. (It's hard to believe that he's a mathematics professor!) His desperate grasping after a lost love neatly parallels the brilliant mathematician's passionate drive to understand the secrets of the universe. -- Las Vegas Review of Books Read more...

"SINGER DISTANCE is the most piquing and arresting science fiction novel in recent memory...Its turns are both intelligent and magical, and its surprises are heartbreaking and boundary-testing." (starred review)

“SINGER DISTANCE is a compelling read, and Rick Hayworth is an engaging narrator. (It's hard to believe that he's a mathematics professor!) His desperate grasping after a lost love neatly parallels the brilliant mathematician's passionate drive to understand the secrets of the universe.” – Las Vegas Review of Books

"Blending mathematics, theoretical physics, philosophy, and passion, Chatagnier has concocted a compelling science fiction yarn that will also appeal to general fiction readers."

“Structured perfectly. . . . Readers are in for a memorable adventure.” (starred review)

“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 “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 “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 "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

Locus's 2022 Recommended Reading List. Read more...

“It is perhaps a misfortune for Mr. Chatagnier to have published this book in the same year as Cormac McCarthy's tandem novels about a schizophrenic female math genius. But SINGER DISTANCE is a much smaller and sweeter production, more romantically attracted to the discovery of a new mathematical system for understanding intimacy and communication.”

France: Albin Michel;

“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 communicating with another planet, and how easily breakable the brilliant can be. The complicated, heartbreaking journey that Rick and Crystal undertake 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.”

"Chatagnier does an excellent job channeling the students' grit, joy, and constant self-awareness, and the elements of astronomy, numerology, love, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life are structured perfectly." (introductory paragraph to Ethan Chatagnier's contribution '10 Brilliant Novels About Communicating with Extraterrestrial Life'" Read more...