THE INVISIBLE THINGS

THE INVISIBLE THINGS is a sharp and clever allegorical story set in the near future about a hidden human civilization on a Jovian moon, a crucial election, and a mysterious invisible oppressor who must not be named.

The Delany, captained by a swashbuckling capitalist named Bob, is circling Europa--one of the moons of Jupiter--studying its atmosphere, but inside, the ship is divided into two warring camps. First there are the group of "Bobs" who slavishly follow the ship's vain, ignorant captain and who antagonize the two crew members who've run afoul of the Bobs: Dwayne and Nalini, who are studying the surface of the moon itself. But it is Dwayne and Nalini who make the ship's one and only discovery--and it's a doozy: One of their drones returns pictures of what appears to be a normal American city enclosed in a dome with a crack in its roof. When the Delany crew steers their ship closer to investigate they find themselves pulled into the domed city: New Roanoke, a city made up of generations of UFO abductees from earth, whose society is a funhouse mirror of the United States.

Nalini, Dwayne, and the Bobs find themselves in the middle of an election in New Roanoke--one that hinges on the question of whether or not its inhabitants should return to Earth. The planet's dome has been cracked and is likely to crumble, its residents are terrorized by "invisible things" that toy with them--slapping them, dragging their bodies around, and sometimes smashing their skulls--and their whole society is haunted by a central mystery: Why are they there?

We follow Nalini into this mirror world and into the same questions of polarized politics, existential crisis, and environmental omens that obsess and divide our own. Who will survive this?

In addition to the three novels LOVING DAY, PYM, and DROP, Mat Johnson has written HUNTING IN HARLEM, plus the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the comic books INCOGNEGRO and DARK RAIN. He is a recipient of the American Book Award, the United States Artist James Baldwin Fellowship, The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. He is a professor at the University of Oregon.