Gregory Coles

Summary: A small group of people from two races encounter, and in the process, discover the challenge of communicating across two languages and a larger reality beyond their known universe.

Tei and Kanan are Fledglings hoping to be selected as Finals. Only ten from each class are selected, the rest being archived. Kanan is a runner who can complete a circuit of the Universe they inhabit in 17 minutes. Tei delves deeply into the archives. Both expect Kanan to be selected. Instead, neither are. Then something strange happens. They announce a special Final is to be selected, an Interpreter to learn the language of beings that exist in the world above, called Natchers. Tei, of all people, is selected, for his deep delvings into the archives, from which he will learn the language. Tei and Kanan have made a promise to find each other, but Kanan will be archived. Except she uses her speed to elude capture, finding herself in a meat locker among remains without the protective shell-like skin that has already been partially stripped off her.

Suddenly she finds herself in the world above with the "Natchers" except they don't call themselves. They speak of themselves as humans, what Kanan's race calls itself. The people she finds herself among call Kanan's race the Cyborgs because of the shell-like covering called "skin" worn over what the "Natchers" call skin. She discovers why communication between the two peoples is so impossible--almost everything in one language means something else, sometimes just its opposite. "Sorry," meant genuinely is considered a word of contempt.

Both Tei and Kanan, unaware of each other, learn that the two races depend on each other. Mahlah, a swimmer, leads a raid to obtain medicine desperately needed from the Cyborgs for an ill child, using re-skinned Kanan to gain access. Eventually Mahlah is captured by the Cyborgs and is "allowed" escape with Tei. Meanwhile, Tei has learned how a single group became two races, and that the Nothing beyond, is not nothing but a larger reality and end of a story they no longer comprehend. The contact Tei and Kanan have with the Natchers, and what they learn implicate them as traitors in the eyes of both races and yet point to truth both races desperately need to understand. As Coles writes, "Truth must be a fragile thing if it only survives in one language."

Gregory Coles has done both some incredible worldmaking and explored how languages shape societies, and how truth is perceived. And as he puts it toward the conclusion of the work:

"The walls of the human world--the boundaries of their worlds--kept them from seeing the one sight that might have opened their eyes" (p. 322).

This is Gregory Coles first work of science fiction. It is the Foreword INDIES Award Finalist for science fiction in 2023, Kirkus Reviews Starred Pick, and a PW Booklife Editor's Pick. I thoroughly enjoyed the twisty plot, the development of Tei, the descriptions of the Universe they inhabit, and the rich exploration of how language works. I hope I will see more from this writer.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.… (mer)

Gregory Coles shares his experience as a gay Christian who believes that God's design for marriage and sex is exclusively for heterosexual couples.

I didn't agree with all of his conclusions, but it was good to read where he's coming from, especially in regard to certain specific issues I've wondered about, such as why a Christian would want to identify as a "gay Christian" - this does seem to me to be identifying with their sinful nature instead of Christ.

I did appreciate his thoughts on Christian suffering and sacrifice, and especially his thoughts on singleness and celibacy.

The book is the perfect length at only 120 pages. Coles gets straight to the point, which I always appreciate.

I think many (most) Christians would benefit from this book and I recommend it - with the caveat that like all memoirs, this is Coles's story, not an in-depth theological study on homosexuality, and should be read with that in mind.

Some quotes I liked:

" 'I'll follow you,' we say to Christ so readily, watching the thorns dig into his forehead. And then, moments later, we cry foul when we discover thorns of our own." (p 38)

"So then, Jesus knew me after all. He hadn't forgotten me. He had known what I would want, how urgently I would want it, how it would seem at times to overtake every thought. And he had responded that the desires I had weren't meant to be fulfilled. Not in this life. He had called me to self-denial, to sorrow. He had called me to a cross." (p 41)… (mer)

Summary: A personal memoir on struggling to fit in and giving up on belonging to pursue Christ, and in the end, finding both.

Gregory Coles grew up struggling to fit in. He was a third culture kid, American-born but raised in Indonesia, returning to the U.S. in college. He grew up pudgy, the least athletic kid in most rooms, thinning out in adolescence. He was a bit of an egghead and he holds a doctorate in English. He is also a Christian, openly gay, and celibate, about which he writes compellingly in his first book, Single, Gay, Christian which I reviewed in 2017. You can see how he might struggle with fitting in.

And yet in his pursuit of Christ, he found belonging as well. But first, something of the story.

The book is written as a kind of a memoir, on the theme of being an alien, an image at once biblical, one that fits his story, and that he plays with in his “Notes From an Alien Anthropologist” at the beginning of each chapter. He traces his family story of how he became a TCK (Third Culture Kid), raised by Jesus movement converts who pursued mission work in Indonesia. He speaks with nostalgia about playing Pooh sticks with friends by the open sewer near his home. He describes airports as his favorite place–where everyone is a misfit and all are passing through and his struggle with national anthems, when one connected more with where he’d grown up than that of the country whose passport he held, and none connected with the one nation he’d given total allegiance to that had no national boundaries.

As a first year college student, he struggles with the question of how he can be from Indonesia with white skin. Three years later, a Christmas trip home results in a case of dengue fever, meaning he only return at the risk of a re-infection that would be far worse, closing the door on that part of his life.

In the second part of the book, he moves from the idea of belonging in a place to belonging with others. He describes the wedding of his boyhood friend Zack to Anna, both the joy and loss, and a wonderful visit to Chicago and a hilarious bingo game he and Anna made up during a Lord of the Rings marathon that sealed a new friendship. Carrie grew up in Indonesia, she and her husband Evan welcomed Greg into their Santai (Indonesian for “relax”) Sundays. There is a wonderful friendship with the Hennings and their boys Grant and Max, who at one point turn a painful conversation after Greg’s “coming out” into “the best Monday ever.”

The last part of the book is about “belonging to.” It begins with his willingness to let go of the importance of reputation to follow Christ when his first book was published, and to know there was One to whom he would always belong. He recalls his habit of giving out carrot sticks in high school, the people he came to know, and the realization that neighboring is giving with no thought of return. He writes of a critical reviewer who became a friend because of her review of his book and concludes with the tattoo that became his Ebenezer of Christ’s love for him.

This is a memoir that is funny at one moment, that takes one (at least this pudgy egghead) back to childhood at another, that catches you up with tears, and sparkles with the joy of one who has risked all to follow Christ’s call only to discover belonging on the other side of loss–of a congregation who does not let him go, of friends who welcome him for dinner and laundry and origami, and of a Christ who never stops loving. Through his own story, he points the way for all of us “aliens” who long to belong.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.… (mer)

The deep-seated self-hatred, internalized homophobia, and martyr complex are so incredibly strong in this book. The cognitive dissonance required to say "my creator made me this way but does not want me to fully experience the human condition" is astounding but sadly more common than one might expect. Especially when it's all for a lie-within-a-lie, since the word "homosexual" didn't even exist in the Christian bible until 1946. I had not read the full summary and was hoping for this to be a book that would explore and tackle the religious trauma felt by many sexual minorities trying to reconcile their existence with a less-than-welcoming church...but instead it does the opposite: it trivializes and exacerbates said trauma for the sake of self-martyrdom and self-aggrandizement.… (mer)