The Radiant Dark is a speculative literary novel exploring the generational impact of communication from intelligent life on another planet. 

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Feels like I’ve been interacting with space content a lot lately, from my recent book club pick Rocket Men about the Apollo 8 mission, to the movie release of Project Hail Mary, to my most recent read The Radiant Dark, by Alexandra Oliva.

What I like about all of them is that while science and technology make these stories possible, it’s not central to the narrative. Instead, these stories probe the human side of what it means to adventure into deep space and make contact with other forms of intelligent life. They use space as a backdrop to contemplate our place in the universe and explore what our understanding of it today means for future generations.

The Radiant Dark explores these themes beautifully. The night that a message first comes from a planet light years away, Carol Girard is an overwhelmed new mother nursing her newborn son while silently resenting her sleeping husband. The discovery of another intelligent life form rocks her world, leading her to expand and upend her family, impacting each of them in different ways over the next five decades. 

This is more of a character-driven novel than a traditional sci-fi narrative. We see how Carol’s obsession with the Rossians, as scientists dub the distant messengers, influences her descendants’ lives and relationships for generations to come. Her son Mikey remains firmly Earthbound, working in the forests of California and intent on conserving the planet we live on. 

Her daughter Rosanna develops a scientific interest in the Rossians, but Carol’s cultish fixation on them drives a wedge between mother and daughter. This makes it even more meaningful when Rosanna becomes a mother herself and feels the same resentment towards her husband as Carol felt decades before. It’s a powerful statement about the universal experience of motherhood despite time, philosophical differences, and scientific advancement.

I really liked how Oliva sets the intimate nature of human relationships against the immense backdrop of our place in the cosmos. I glazed over a bit during the scientific explanations of how humans interpreted the Rossians’ messages, though I do think the book needed this, and Oliva keeps the science light. To me, the complex nature of present-day mother-daughter relationships is far more interesting than the distant beings they have to wait twenty-two years to hear back from. 

Like my favorite space stories, The Radiant Dark is less about the universe itself and more about people trying to understand their place within it. Read this one if you want a character driven family drama set against the sci-fi backdrop of space exploration and communication with other beings.