Mysteries of Motion

Hortense Calisher's excursion into science fiction: A rich portrait of the passengers aboard the first civilian space shuttle

The Citizen Courier is headed toward Island US, "the first public habitat in space." Aboard the ship resides a collection of diverse travelers. Narrator Tom Gilpin is a rich publisher, and he's joined by fellow journalist Veronica, as well as an industrialist, a Jewish-German expatriate philosopher, a diplomat and his wife, and the teenage son of a NASA admiral.

Revealing a complex, nonlinear narrative for each of its characters, the iridescent literary sci-fi of Mysteries of Motion captures lives and relationships as labyrinthine as the space vessel that carries them, channeling intergalactic, philosophical, and psychological voyages.