Adam Soto is a co-web editor at American Short Fiction. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is a former Michener-Copernicus Foundation Fellow. He lives with his wife in Austin, Texas, where he is a teacher and a musician. This Weightless World is his first novel.
"Soto brilliantly inverts the inherently outward aspect of the
first-contact trope—the idea of seeking salvation in the stars—by
forcing his characters to look inward, to question their
acquiescence on issues like climate change, police brutality, and
the smothering influence of Big-Tech . . . It's precisely Soto's
refusal to be 'weighted' down by decades of genre tradition, to
instead turn the trope on its head and in doing so remind us that
no-one but ourselves is coming to save us, that makes This
Weightless World such an exciting and radical novel."
—Ian Mond, Locus
"Set in Silicon Valley and Chicago, This Weightless World considers
questions of morality in a world where people feel powerless in the
face of formidable systemic forces."
—Laura Adamczyk, A.V. Club
"Though the novel gestures toward wider global reactions, Soto
wisely focuses on a few specific humans . . . Soto’s characters are
finely drawn, as are their philosophically thorny conflicts with
each other . . . Amid the discovery of alien life, a touching
meditation on humanity."
—Kirkus Reviews
“Highly recommended for idealistic and compassionate readers who
enjoy scifi and fantasy that reflects on the nature of human
empathy surrounding a world-changing event. See Cloud Atlas, 1Q84,
Contact, and Station Eleven.”
—Suncerae Smith, Read Well Reviews
"What of our current moment is ephemeral, and what is part of some
unstoppable machine? By starting with one of the big 'what
ifs'—extraterrestrial contact—Adam Soto charts his own course in
looking for the answer. At once utterly ambitious, moving, and
intimate, This Weightless World stretches from domestic protests to
centuries-distant planets, all while exploring the delicate hopes
of its characters. I couldn't stop reading. The ending was
unforgettable. I can't believe Soto pulled it off!"
—Kawai Strong Washburn, author of the PEN/Hemingway
Award-winning Sharks in the Time of Saviors
"This Weightless World is pure polyphony. Adam Soto sets
programmers alongside revolutionaries, the contours of love
alongside the coruscations of code, the power of classical music
alongside the beauty of video games, and he does it all with total
authority. Here it is: the social novel for the 21st century."
—Robin Sloan, author of Sourdough
"This Weightless World filters its alien encounters and deep-space
expeditions, its dreams and anxieties about the centuries to come,
through the beating hearts of a few struggling, yearning, fumbling,
desperate, modern-day human beings. It's not so much a novel of
ideas, asking, 'What does the future hold for us?,' as a novel
populated by characters who can't stop asking themselves that same
question. Reading it, I was reminded that caring about the fate of
the planet is really a matter of caring about the fates of its
billions of distinct and individual inhabitants, with their
billions of distinct and individual futures."
—Kevin Brockmeier, author of A Brief History of the Dead
"With This Weightless World—and its use of a classic alien contact
story to reveal America’s constant struggle with race, class,
inequality and mistrust— Adam Soto proves that he gets what science
fiction is really about: it’s always the present rather than the
far future, and the right here rather than the far away. A
fascinating debut."
—Tim Maughan, author of Infinite Detail, a Locus Award finalist
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