Turns out that even in space, politics feel just like they do at home.
Partisan tribes living on a moon of Jupiter shout at one another in the sci-fi world of Invisible Things, the new novel by Mat Johnson, an author, screenwriter, and Philip H. Knight Chair at the University of Oregon.
The bubble city of New Roanoke functions like any American city, protagonist Nalini Jackson explains, “with a largely bifurcated political culture.”
New Roanoke is dominated by the Founders Party and the Party of the People. But Jackson, a sociologist, realizes the two-party system is a fallacy—she’s observed nuanced political subgroups: the miserable Malcontents, the “don’t care” Floater majority, and the privileged, upper-class Beneficiaries, for example. Power belongs to whoever can control the narrative about the city’s origin.But how far will they go to push their agenda? How far will Americans go?
“I go into a book with a question, and if I’m lucky I get closer to the answer by the end,” says Johnson, whose literary talents are gaining visibility and supporting his work as an educator. Loving Day (2015) graced the cover of the New York Times Book Review and 2022’s Invisible Things, his fifth novel, won praise from the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR’s Fresh Air, where he’s become a regular contributor. Johnson is a recipient of an American Book Award and the United States Artist James Baldwin Fellowship. When he’s not on campus, Johnson’s at work on scripts for Apple TV+ and Netflix, among other producers.
Johnson wrote Invisible Things partly in 2020 and 2021, as Americans fought over the facts of a global pandemic, human-caused climate change, the integrity of the voting system, and the nation’s legacy of slavery. Some accepted widely held truths; others doubled down on denialism.
Johnson asks: what will wake people from their partisan trance and accept the existential crisis facing many Americans—and especially Black Americans such as him?
How about invisible forces crushing skulls?