Overview: They flew 13 light years away to build their utopian society. But human nature caught up to them.

Verdict: War. Corruption. Overpopulation. Climate change. When Earth reaches a tipping point, the world’s wealthiest man decides to reboot civilization on another habitable planet. Deemed Project Exodus, the voyage includes 4,000 like-minded colonists, a political manifesto, and all the resources they can fit on their ship.

But traversing the stars and establishing the first permanent colony on a new planet is merely the first step. The real challenge lies in their attempt at a sustainable utopia.

The story spans three generations of colonists on planet Eden, from the first settlers of Project Exodus to the native-born and their own progeny. With each new generation comes an existential threat to their way of life, and one family always finds itself at the center of conflict.

Meanwhile, an otherworldly figure lurks in the recesses of time and space, slowly working toward its own designs.

I have to honestly say that the cover was the first thing to grab my attention, let alone the title of the book, but when I started reading it, my goodness, I was quickly off and running into this dutifully created, insightfully nuanced, scene setting, character driven, attention grabbing narrative that I just simply could not put down (ok, I read the book in just two days, so yeah, I guess I did physically put it down, but you get the point!).

The chapters are plentiful, but not overly long in prose, all be they a collective of incisive explorations of human nature in a way that I can long since recall having read on the page, as subtly nuanced like this before in print.

Simply put, The Artifice of Eternity: A Novel by author Aaron H. Arm is a book that everyone should read, that everyone should read at the very least twice, as it not only spins a quite wondrous tale for us all to dive into this summer, but it comes complete with a real-life health warning to the human populous, as a whole.

In closing, The Artifice of Eternity is a sweeping science fiction narrative with elements of mystery, psychological fiction, and political commentary interspersed with media documents from Earth’s past. It is an insightful appraisal of humanity’s enduring pursuit to escape human nature.

About the Author - Aaron attended Ithaca College for a B.A. in English and an M.A. in adolescent education. After a dozen years of teaching, he now works as a writer and editor. The Artifice of Eternity is his debut novel, which is an homage to the science fiction that inspired him. Aaron believes that science fiction is at its best when used as a mirror or lens to evaluate our own world. He lives in Brooktondale, NY.

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