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Summary and Reviews of Toward Eternity by Anton Hur

Toward Eternity by Anton Hur

Toward Eternity

A Novel

by Anton Hur
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  • Jul 9, 2024, 256 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Negotiating the terrain of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun and Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility, a brilliant, haunting speculative novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling translator that sets out to answer the question: What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body's cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal.

Literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun—himself a recipient of nanotherapy—mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears, the event raises disturbing questions. What happened to Yonghun, and though he's returned, is he really himself anymore?

When Dr. Beeko, the scientist who holds the patent to the nanotherapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness from the machine into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive—and begin to replicate—their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.

Exploring the nature of intelligence and the unexpected consequences of progress, the meaning of personhood and life, and what we really have to fear from technology and the future, Toward Eternity is a gorgeous, thought-provoking novel that challenges the notion of what makes us human—and how love survives even the end of that humanity.

Part 1
The Near Future

Mali

Something has happened, something so extraordinary that I cannot file it into Patient One's official medical file, which is why I am writing it here in a separate physical notebook.

Patient One, our first clinical trial patient, was found missing.

Security footage from the South African University of Science and Technology's closed-circuit cameras has him leaving a storage room and not coming out on the other side. He is in one frame and—blink—gone in the other, the door swinging into the emptiness he had occupied a moment prior.

The Cape Town Police Authority are investigating the incident, but they have little to work with. There is no indication that the footage has been doctored, although I suppose there's always that possibility. The cameras at the Singularity Lab (horribly anachronistic name, yes) are practically geriatric in terms of video technology. But if the footage is altered, why on earth would someone have altered it? Has Patient One been...

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Hur, the Korean-to-English translator of many noted works, such as Bora Chung's Cursed Bunny, Baek Se-hee's I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, Sang Young Park's Love in the Big City, and Kyung-sook Shin's The Court Dancer, is understandably concerned with language, all its possibilities and limitations, and how deeply entwined language and humanity are. This is the question at the heart of Toward Eternity: through AI, how much humanity is preserved and how much is lost? Only the novel's first narrator, Mali, is fully human. Each successive narrator is writing in the same notebook, passed along through generations, but they are all androids, whose memories of humanity are diluted more and more as the centuries go by. Even so, each of them yearns in some way for what has been lost: they cling to ideas and talismans that signal to individuality—poetry, seashells, memories once made in the bodies they currently inhabit...continued

Full Review Members Only (556 words)

(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).

Media Reviews

Booklist (starred review)
National Book Award–finalist Hur is deservedly the Korean-to-English translator of choice. Language, unsurprisingly, drives his spectacular, speculative debut novel....Hur creates with expansive erudition harnessing science, technology, history, landscapes, culture; his world building is brilliant and boundless.

Library Journal (starred review)
[A] moving, philosophical exploration of what it means to be alive. Hur asks whether the self can exist beyond biology and memory, whether souls can be made rather than born, and whether the most enduring part of humanity might be as ethereal a concept as love....Hur's thought-provoking novel will appeal to readers who love gripping metaphysical science fiction, such as Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Memory or Robert J. Sawyer's Calculating God."

Kirkus Reviews
[A]n unfailing affirmation of the persistence of love and art, even in the face of oblivion, one that tells us 'it's the story you write that is you.' A novel that traces humanity's journey from what we imagine ourselves to be to what's next.

Publishers Weekly
Though Hur's worldbuilding occasionally feels unwieldy, the final sections are worth the wait, as nanodroids read Yonghun's journal entries about poetry and consider the impact of art on humanity. Fans of Anthony Doerr and Emily St. John Mandel ought to take a look.

Author Blurb E. J. Koh, author of The Liberators
Anton Hur emerges as one of the most exciting translators, and now authors, of our generation. Toward Eternity develops a surreal and subversive terrain of nanite swarms, exploding memories, and symphonic poetry. Hur unburies both familiar and ancient history, geography, and language—a sprawling, crystalline, and deftly crafted vision of a yet unimaginable future.

Author Blurb Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder
Anton Hur is a genius and this book is a fast, fun, and smart read. An exploration of language, AI, and what it means to be human, Toward Eternity is a terrific debut from a fearless writer and acclaimed translator.

Author Blurb Porochista Khakpour, author of Tehrangeles and Sick: A Memoir
Hur is first and foremost one of our best writers. This chilling gem of speculative fiction is written with the restrained elegance and dazzling precision of an expert who can bend, tone, and ultimately alchemize language into a truly singular storytelling experience. You'll never look at the intersections of poetry and biology, and art and technology, the same again. What a delight to witness a writer in complete control of his craft, to experience the thrills of invention as unforgettable as the most canonical cautionary tales of the genre.

Reader Reviews

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Beyond the Book



Artificial Intelligence in Literature

Display of covers of AI books in this article As artificial intelligence has become an ever-present part of our world, more and more authors have considered its ramifications on our society. In recent years alone, a slew of novels and short stories have been published that explore themes like human nature, scientific progress, love, and human connection through the eyes of characters who are not fully human. Anton Hur's debut novel, Toward Eternity, is just one of these. Below are some others.

Klara and the Sun by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro follows the titular character Klara, an "Artificial Friend" who is purchased by a family for use as a companion for their young daughter, Josie. Klara's narration is infused with a sort of childlike wonder as she discovers the natural...

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Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Toward Eternity, try these:

  • Sea of Tranquility jacket

    Sea of Tranquility

    by Emily St. John Mandel

    Published 2023

    About this book

    More by this author

    The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

  • Klara and the Sun jacket

    Klara and the Sun

    by Kazuo Ishiguro

    Published 2022

    About this book

    More by this author

    Klara and the Sun is a magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro--author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day.

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