Searching and alive with feeling, Biswas’s novel debut centers the human in the cosmos through the story of Franz Herbert and his remarkable life and career, from college and graduate school for astronomy and astrophysics in the Depression era to his surprise disappearance decades later, as a 65 year old man. Though he spends much of his life in Peoria, Herbert’s mind is most at home far from this Earth. A celebrated astronomer, Franz detected the first black hole in 1930 and also reports that he discovered Pluto, though he acknowledges that it’s not actually a planet. “It doesn’t belong and that is why I have claimed it as my own,” he notes, “For I don’t belong either.” Franz endures epileptic seizures in his adulthood, finding himself captive and witness to visions whenever one grips him. The seizures, though, evolve for him into something of a form of escape when his life takes several unexpected turns, with Franz believing he “…must depart this void... Or else merge with the emptiness.” Biswas tells the story mostly through Herbert’s own lyric writing, blending the personal (his courtship and marriage with Isabella; his medical travails; his experience of loss) with Herbert’s passion for what’s beyond this Earth, which he explores through science but also visionary “travels.” On PSR B1620-26c, in the Scorpio constellation, he describes how on “an alluvial plain I came upon evidence of another civilization,” while other trips include meetings with Greek gods while he maintains a relationship with the son he never had.
How much can he see, and how much is fantasy? “Within our own bodies is mirrored the universe in which we live,” Herbert muses. There is beauty in seeing Franz’s self-discovery twined with his discovery of the universe—and how the grass is always greener back on the blue planet. But this thoughtful, uncompromisingly literary voyage is for lovers of science, prose touched with poetry, and life at the edges—of the mind, of the universe.
Takeaway: Visionary novel of an astronomer's journey through life and the cosmos.
Comparable Titles: Benjamin Labatut’s The MANIAC, Jack Cheng’s See You in the Cosmos.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
In Brian Biswas' new novel, The Astronomer, he has chosen to confound us frequently regarding how he and the main character regard reality, and we are often forced to think about our own ways of looking at the real and the fantastic, about fact and fiction... he also challenges us to think about whether or not the dreams and other mental wanderings of people who don't have "normal" mental lives constitute another reality as well.
Biswas' writing is remarkably expansive throughout, and readers will find it deeply impressive how he captures two distinct voices: one of prosaic reason and another of disordered brilliance. Overall, it's a fantastically strange novel that's as grippingly eccentric as the protagonist at its center.
