**Thank you to NetGalley and Astra House Publishing for the eARC of this book**

This was one of those books that I should have liked ~in theory.~
First contact - check
Characters with depth - check
Spaceships - check

Unfortunately, the plot fell flat for me and never really got going, making this book an effort to read. I typically enjoy books that switch between multiple characters that all end up being connected somehow, but this one felt choppy and confusing instead of cohesive.

While I liked the overall concepts and ideas behind this book, everything was beaten to death with political conversations. At the beginning of the book, Earth receives a signal from space. Earthlings begin behaving better, making elaborate promises - anything to make humans look “better” to the aliens.

Very early on in the book I got Childhood’s End vibes from Arthur C Clarke. That then turned into a couple hundred pages of lukewarm political standpoints.

As someone who reads to get AWAY from the real world, I just found this novel to be overall not an enjoyable read.

3 stars for characters that I cared about and an overall interesting concept.

Given the gravity of its subject matter, This Weightless World is an oddly gentle--or perhaps gently odd--book. While its themes include the struggles and conflicts of race, class, gender, and ideologies in 21st-century America as well as the global impact of a message from another planet, its focus on the relationships between its central characters makes it a book about the human rather than a book about humanity.

In places I found that Soto's narrative loses propulsive force underneath the weight of a few too many perspective shifts and a little too much textual atmosphere. The characters are so sympathetic, though, and the atmosphere so tangible, that the book doesn't suffer overly much from its own occasional wallowing. It picks back up and keeps going, and keeps the reader with it.

This is a nice entry in the world of literary science fiction. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for speculative fiction that doesn't rely on violence, action, or grand adventure to convey its messages, and anyone who is more interested in the potential impact of alien life on the human condition than in the details of that alien life.

I received a free e-ARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my review.

Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-galley for review. "This Weightless World" by Adam Soto has a great premise, what happens when SETI picks up a transmission from another planet, but then it loses its own idea. The book becomes less about the transmission and more about a data mining app from Google. The writing seems very forced and "try-hard". .

On January 1, 2012, we learned that we were not alone in the universe. Signals from a planet called Omni, 75 light years away, have reached Earth. This Weightless World follows main characters music teacher Sevi Del Toro, his Google-employed programmer girlfriend Romona, and his cello protege Eason, through life in the aftermath of this great awakening. Prior to the discovery of Omni, Ramona had relocated from Chicago to California for her work for Google, and her relationship with Sevi had fizzled. But Omni rekindles a euphoric and carefree love, and Sevi quits his teaching job (as the public schools are closing down around him in favor of Charters anyway) and moves to California as well, leaving Eason, a young Black teenager, without his music-loving role model. Insets from different timelines punctuate the novel, transporting our perspective. At times dark and introspective and at times elated and almost delirious, This Weightless World is a book that will make you pause and think about existence: human, alien, and AI. Packed with tidbits of knowledge strung together by character development it’s about the impact on relationships, philosophy when one truth changes everything - a signal from another planet knowing we are not alone in the universe.

This Weightless World can best be described as literary science fiction, with deeply beautiful and thoughtful writing. At times it reminded me of Arthur C Clarke, Ursula K Le Guin, and occasionally Philip K Dick in tone. Slow in pace, I found myself circling back to highlight passages and pausing often to think between sections. This novel isn’t going to be for everyone, but if you enjoy slow, character based, introspective classic science fiction like I do, this is the book for you.

4.5 stars, with the strong potential for a rating increase the longer I sit and think with this book.

“Mr. Del Toro wasn’t an adult, not really…”

This book charmed me in so many ways! I should start out by saying that, generally, I don’t read a lot of sci-fi, but something about the blurb and the cover for this volume really intrigued me… and for me personally, it paid off! Soto’s narrative and language is a delight, and I have to comment on how much I loved their various characters and the development - I honestly felt that each character was a living, breathing, flawed individual, which is often difficult to replicate in multiple pov novels, so I applaud Soto here. Also, this was the first time I have ever read about a *female* programmer, in a way that actually felt authentic and realistic and it was *so* refreshing!

It’s the depth to the writing, the layers of information and details and the context that makes this volume so honest and so unnervingly believable. This could have happened (and still continue to happen), without question.


I’m completely won over. What a delight!

Thank you to NetGalley and AstraHouse for the privilege!


Ps. When the chapters open with speech, even with the presentation of the oversized capital letter, I would have thought speech marks should still be included.

This was an interesting and strangely enjoyable read for me. I’m not entirely sure I understood everything the author was going for but I liked the multiple characters viewpoints and also how this had a quite personal level that could be broadened to just being human. The story basically begins when a signal is heard from a distant planet called Omni. It’s a planet wide game changer apparently. The main earth based characters revolve around Sevi, a cellist and teacher in Chicago. His ex girlfriend Ramona works for Google on AI and has moved to San Francisco. Eason is Sevi’s student, and gifted musician. Another main thread of the story and probably the bit I liked the most was the astronaut, He Zhen, on the way to Omni. In conversation with the AI on board, stories are told, history, nature and humanity are all explored. I enjoyed the writing and the story comes together well. It’s both sad and hopeful in the end.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, the publisher, and Adam Soto for this eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are wholly my own.

Let me start by saying that this book was not at all what I expected. This isn’t so much a bad thing, but we will start with the positive aspects first. Soto wrote these characters with passion. You’ll become engrossed with these separate relationships and how the characters react to different things. That’s honestly the absolute best part of this story.

My issues are more with the description; it is misleading. I don’t know that this is a book I would’ve requested if adequately described. I struggled to become invested in some of these storylines, but others make up for the less exciting sections. So basically, it was interesting enough not to be a DNF, but it was close in parts. Just don’t go into this thinking it’s going to be super alien heavy. You will be massively disappointed as the alien subplot is honestly kind of just a minimal blip of this whole story.
I feel kind of indifferent after reading This Weightless World. It is beautifully written but isn’t going to be a memorable book. It’s a 3 star read for me.

I really don’t know how to talk about this book. It’s getting difficult for me. How do I even talk about a book that I couldn’t connect to? I mean it’s a good book for fans of the genre. But for me, who was trying out something new, this genuinely did not impress. I will refrain from saying much becuase I am no judge for this genre, but again, as a newcomer, it’s not a story I’d like to read.

I was initially delighted by to find a Chicago based narrative, which has aliens, and critiques for the SF tech scene. Rather, this book ends up being more of a think piece than a flashy action novel. In short, this leans heavily into the literary vs sci-fi.

Before my critiques, I loved Soto’s writing. There were so many moments I just stopped and thought ‘wow’ before delving back into the story.

The plotting is very loose, but the majority of the novel is spent with Ramona and Sevi. He leaves his teaching post to follower her out to SF after she gets a job with Google. She then wrestles with the responsibility of the technology she creates among SF’s ongoing gentrification.

Interspaced are multiple other short narratives, similar to Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath vignettes, the purpose of which are not clear until the end. In the vaguest way possible, the reveals are worth it.

Discussions unfurl centering free will, the role of technology and pending world collapse. However, so much energy is put into discussing the role of how the world ends, the actual ‘end’ of the world is lost.

I enjoyed the AI plot twist, but wanted more details around the mysterious planet Omni, and humanity’s decision to seed space. However, Soto nailed the banality of the end of the world. How quickly the planet caught everyone’s attention, and then subsequently lost it, perfectly captures society’s short attention span. Even when trying to stave off the end of the world.

Big ups to NetGalley for the ARC.

This is the book you write when you've spent too much time in writing programs, academia, and fellowships. Every sentence is pristine, every paragraph features a tortured simile, every political discussion can't help but veer into myopic, academic verbiage. In fact, every political position left of "moderate" is deconstructed, examined, criticized, undercut, and complicated. There are some insightful points being made about the current political discourse, but Soto's insistence on using every character as a political mouthpiece for his Twitter commentary gets very tiring.

It's a shame, too, because Soto has composed some fascinating characters worth following. He grants them all complex, contradictory beliefs and desires; tenderness is extended to everyone who shows up in this novel. However, they are rarely in motion, and if they are in motion, it happens off-screen, except for an excruciatingly predictable scene involving a police officer. A conversation counts as major excitement for these characters. Typically, Soto tells us what character is thinking and feeling in summary, and for every insight provided, he insists upon a convoluted proclamation about their being, seemingly to impress his MFA peers.

Check it out if you like long, political Twitter threads, maybe skip it if you're a plot-based creature.

I loved the description and the concept of this book, but the delivery just wasn't my style. It is solidly more contemporary fiction than science fiction, although the science fiction aspect is quite well done. The dialogue seemed stilted and unrealistic to me, which caused me to feel detached from the characters and lose the thread of the story rather often. Readers who like their stories a little more esoteric and contemporary will most likely find plenty to love!

(Content warnings: Sexual content, drug use, police brutality, racism)

Despite the impression you might get from the blurb, this is honestly hardly a first contact book at all - it starts off with the detection of a mysterious alien signal from a planet called Omni, sure, but the Omni signal is just a backdrop for the story, kind of a trigger event for all the philosophical discussions and introspections. The book alternates between the points of view of Sevi, a music teacher, Ramona, his girlfriend working at Google, and Eason, his teenage cello student - 3 ordinary people, for whom the whole Omni thing is more of a background noise, trying to go about their not particularly eventful lives. I can imagine this tangential nature of the sci-fi element of the story won't work for everyone. I thought it was interesting, captured the vibe of how major historical events can sometimes feel like more of a footnote in the lives of regular people. (Though those chapters could get a liiittle boring sometimes.)

And then, interspersed between those 3 perspectives, is the occasional and seemingly completely unrelated glimpse into the life of He Zhen, a future astronaut on a lonely, one-way space mission, with only an AI for company. And I'm not gonna lie, those were the parts I enjoyed the most - they were just as profound and contemplative as the other 3 POVs while also including more of the speculative aspect of sci-fi I like so much.

It's kinda hard to talk about what happens in the book because, 1., it's not a lot, tbh, and, 2., it's not about what happens, it's about the Themes™ 👌. At heart, I think, this is a novel about grappling with guilt - the guilt of living your life when there's so much shitty things happening all over the world right now this very moment, all the shitty things humanity has done and is doing and will do to each other and to the planet that you're not doing anything about. And yes, it's just as depressing as it sounds. Sure made me feel miserable more than a couple of times. But then again, there's something compelling about it, and I found the ending to be, for one reason or another, quite cathartic. I loved the way that He Zhen's story ended up pulling together the threads of the other 3 POVs into a moving ending, despite appearing to be completely separate from them for most of the novel. Was it sad? Was it hopeful? Was it depressing? Yes. No. Idk. But it DID have me crying my eyes out in the middle of the night, so there's that <3

I also enjoyed the writing itself - it may have crossed over to a little too preachy or ~quirky~ every now and then, but most of the time I found it quite poetic and thoughtful; there's at least a couple passages going straight to my "favourite quotes of all time" notebook, which is not an honour bestowed on most books I read, haha.

(Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!)

I really loved this book! Such an interesting way to flip sci-fi tropes and create such a compelling story. The atmosphere of this book really stood out to me - I really loved how I felt while reading and was so excited to get back to this book during the day.

Hmmm... this one is going to be difficult for me to review. It certainly has merit as a literary social commentary piece. But it is so deeply depressing I almost couldn't finish it. If you, as I do, prefer vibrant science fiction, alive with a future full of robust possibility, it's not for you. If you, instead, often contemplate the fall of mankind and find interest in exploring the various ways we could possibly reach that destination--with or without fanfare--I'd recommend This Weightless World to you.

Throughout a narrative that is at times interjected with letters from the past ("Dear Babichev...") and visions from the future ("Tell me, Taka..."), the book mainly centers around three main characters: Sevi, Eason, and Ramona. Sevi is an middle-aged cellist whose dreams of a professional career gave him only a teaching job. Eason is his protégé, whom, in spite of all his raw talent and passion for music, faces a dismal future as a drug dealer. Ramona is Sevi’s on-again-off-again love interest, working for Google to create an app she hopes will save humanity from itself. The first-contact event is set mostly as a backdrop to these characters and their individual endeavors.

This book reminded me somewhat of George Orwell's 1984; examining a potential future of mankind, though set in the past (2012 to be exact). It borrows elements from classic science fiction, such as aliens, first-contact, and the development of new technologies (and explores the consequences thereof), but it examines it all through heavy social commentary. It is, in a word, depressing. But it makes you think.

It’s at the halfway point that I tend to make up my mind about a book. I prefer my science fiction coloured with excitement, hope, and possibility—and there really isn't any of that in this story—but I can respect the views it expresses. What if we made first contact, and it didn’t matter or change anything? That’s the idea This Weightless World explores (and probably how it would go in real life). Soto is a true poet. He has the uncanny ability to somehow find beauty in the mundane and express it through a lens of sadness. Take the main character, Sevi, for an example. He's getting older and his childhood dreams are passing him by unfulfilled. Real life is bleak. Yet there is still beauty and meaning still in the bleakness, if one will appreciate it. Making a cup of coffee or making love to one dear to you, adoring all their perfect imperfections and normalness, has meaning even when everything else feels empty.

For me, other than the romance between Ramona and Sevi, this book drags on with heartbreaking what's-the-point-of-it-all. It was a struggle for me to finish, once I realized it wasn't really about first contact. If you liked 1984, though, you will definitely enjoy this modern take on mankind's quest to destroy itself. Or save itself. That's the question, isn't it?

What happens after aliens make contact? This novel, which is much heavier on the literary fiction side than the sci-fi side, answers the question of how the world would respond to a first contact event. Told through multiple perspectives, the novel takes place in 2012. I would say that it accurately captured the feelings and perspectives of that year. The plot meandered a bit, and I felt that I wanted a bit more - however, this was probably on me for expecting a bit more sci-fi. If you go into this expecting more of a literary fiction novel, I think you will enjoy it more.

The Good: Empathetic characters trying to help after alien contact; an AI that "saves" humanity
The Bad: Light on plot and scifi
The Literary: Multiple POVs, alternating timelines; Italo Calvino, The Grapes of Wrath, Les Miserables, and many more that comment on the human situation

SETI begins to receive a message from Omni-7xc, a planet 75 light years away, confirming extraterrestrial life. As the news unfolds, Sevi, a high school music teacher, answers the phone when his on-again, off-again computer-programmer girlfriend Ramona calls, and they pick up their relationship where they left off. The school where Sevi teaches closes, and his favorite music student struggles to find his place in the world.

This Weightless World sounds like scifi, but it's more interested in exploring the struggles of humanity. Once I accepted this story as more literary than scifi and settled into the sad intellectual monologues about how we humans are mostly terrible, I enjoyed this one a lot more. So since you know the themes are much bigger than the plot, I'll spoil a little. The signal from space is constant, and as scientists begin to decode it humanity's infighting stops as we begin to turn our perspectives outward. Things seem optimistic. Then, the signal abruptly stops, and we fall back into our old patterns.

Nearly all the characters revolve around Sevi, each with their own cares and motivations, all of whom really come to life. Sevi, the burned-out music teacher who regrets many of his life decisions, is primarily looking for a small slice of happiness and connection by trying to make it work with Ramona. Ramona works long hours coding on a special AI program at Google, one that's designed to steer users to make decisions based on what the AI deems necessary for human survival. The only student with whom Sevi remains in contact after the high school closes is Eason, a young man who wrestles with the choice of selling drugs to help a friend or trying to leave his neighborhood and pursue classical music. Then there's Sevi's brother,  Samson, who neglects all his relationships to follow the next humanitarian crusade, this time to Syria. There are two more POV characters, one in the past, and one in the future, who provide wonderful bookends, but I'll let you experience those for yourself.

Everybody in this story is trying their best to make the world a better place in their own way, often disagreeing on the best path forward. But what they all have in common with each other and the reader is that they all hit an empathy wall. The world is too big and they can only do so much, and I'd argue, are forgiven by the reader.

As the world moves around him, Sevi notes and comments on gentrification, cops shooting black people, the coral reefs dying, separating art from the artist, aging parents, music as powerful as medicine or language, being the only brown person in your friend group, and consciousness as self, to name a few. But most importantly, this book reinforces the idea that we love to think that something will come along at the perfect time to solve all of the problems we ourselves created.

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.

Good overall, although a little flawed. This doesn't have the polish of a most experienced author, and I didn't stayed engaged throughout. But I like the author's imagination and the plot itself. I look forward Soto's next book. 3.5 Stars.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

OH my gosh. This book was sooooo cool. When I was reading it, I felt so mature haha. Although I read a lot of contemporary, sci-fi is actually one of my favorite genres. But it's just so like scientific and "inspiring" this was a nice indulge and it was a super fun and cool read.
The only reason that I am rating this 4 stars is because I feel like the level was a little too high so I didn't understand EVERYTHING.
but yeah, if you are older than me, this will probably be a 5 star read for you!

I loved the idea for this novel and seeing life when life is literally changing around you. How people adapt can be very interesting to watch. Unfortunately, it was hard for me to care about the characters as they were written. It seemed to move too slowly for me. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

How long ago does something have to be set before it counts as a period piece? This Weightless World is set in 2012, a point in time that feels recent to me but was, in fact, nearly a decade ago. (Ew!) Adam Soto definitely captures the kinds of things I was reading (Joe Meno, Wikipedia, Contact) and feeling (like the world was ending, Maya Apocalypse notwithstanding) at that time, though of course your mileage may vary on that one.
As for the actual content of the book, I thought it was just okay. Split perspectives rarely work well, and three fourths of them here felt similar to the point of being redundant — the whole "sad intellectual monologues intellectually at other sad intellectuals" thing, while very 2012, gets old after, like, a few dozen pages, and I wish Soto picked one of these storylines (cough cough Eason's) to really invest in.
Then we have the fourth perspective, focusing on sad astronaut He Zhen, which is inexplicably told in the first-person and is also inexplicably much better than the other three. Aside from the musical descriptions in the Eason sections, this was the only part of the book that I consistently enjoyed, at least in part because I felt like it was actually going somewhere.
In all four perspectives, the whole "discovery of presumably intelligent alien life" thing is backgrounded, hard, and I've been going back and forth on whether or not I think it's successful. On the one hand, there were points where I wondered whether the Omni plot needed to be included at all. But there were other points were I found it genuinely moving—there's one moment early in the story where Eason laments that the murder of his friend will be forgotten in the face of more cosmically significant events, another where Sevi visits his parents for the first time in months and notices their age. There's a general sense that life goes on, for better or worse; that the problems we had yesterday are the problems we're likely to have tomorrow, regardless of the supposedly life-changing things that may happen today.
Hey, who says genre fiction is only about escapism!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley, who provided a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.