BEACON FROM SPACE IMPACTS FAMILY FOR GENERATIONS

The Radiant Dark  

By Alexandra Oliva

(Zando – SJP Lit)

In 1980, a mysterious display of lights appears in the night sky. On the same night, a mother cares for her pre-mature son who was supposed to be born on this date. Astronomers determine the lights are accompanied by a radio signal, a Beacon from near a star called Ross 128 eleven light-years away. On the night the Beacon is announced, Carol conceives another child. They name her Rosanna, after the star system. As life happens through the years, the Rossians become a central focus for mother and daughter, both drawing them together and tearing them apart.

AUTHORLINK: What was your first thought about writing this story? How did it develop from there?

OLIVA: I had the idea for this book while listening to a podcast about the movie Arrival. An astronomer made a lighthearted point about how if we were to ever really make contact with aliens, they probably wouldn’t just show up. First contact is much more likely to happen via radio waves with a civilization tens, hundreds, or maybe even thousands of light-years away. But, he joked, he understood why Hollywood always has the aliens visit Earth: There’s no way to make a long-distance exchange unfolding over generations exciting. Hearing that, I had an immediate aha moment. I knew I could tell that story and make it exciting. The bones of the novel came to me then and there, including the broad strokes of the family at its heart and the general structure. From there it was a matter of figuring out the details and putting in the work.

AUTHORLINK: While The Beacon from Ross is a central event in your story, what happens in the Girard family with their life and relationships is more the focus of your novel. How did you tie these together?

OLIVA: One of my favorite things about writing this book was that on one hand you have two civilizations separated by eleven light-years communicating fairly effectively, and on the other hand you have people living in the same house who don’t know how to talk to each other. I loved being able to bounce these two truths against each other.

I also knew from the get-go that this was going to be a generational story rooted in familial relationships, in particular in a mother-daughter relationship. But that entire relationship is happening under the umbrella of First Contact. This is a world, an alternate history, in which we know for certain that intelligent alien life exists and wants to communicate with us. How does that ripple through society? Through families? How does it affect how ordinary individuals go about their day? I really wanted to explore the game-changing implications of First Contact while digging into the fact that people would still have to live their lives. Meals still need to be cooked and diapers still need to be changed. Can you imagine: You learn that aliens exist and then have to go change a diaper?

AUTHORLINK: Why did you set most of your story embedded in our recent past rather than at some time in the future?

OLIVA: I wanted the bulk of the story to overlap with my lifetime so I could draw from personal experience while writing it. Also, by starting in the past, I could draw parallels to our world more readily and tweak history in fun ways, rather than having to strictly imagine the future starting from our today, which would involve really cranking up the sci-fi dial. I love science fiction, but in this particular case I think skewing too heavily toward the future would have made the characters less relatable and the narrative less effective.

AUTHORLINK: Tell about the idea of giving Carol and Ro such different perspectives on light even though they are both fascinated by the Rossians.

OLIVA: I always knew the mother-daughter relationship in this book would have a spirituality-versus-science edge, and I wanted to approach both sides of that equation with as much empathy and honesty as possible. Carol, the mother at the opening of the book, is desperately seeking warmth and a sense of connection, first through her marriage, then through her children, and ultimately in a cult. Her daughter, Ro, excels academically and doors open for her that never opened for Carol. She’s able to go to college and pursue her dream of becoming a scientist. Both characters have access to much of the same information when it comes to the Rossians, but because of their very different experiences and personalities, they interpret that information in radically different ways.

AUTHORLINK: I noticed that having children brought on anger in three generations of women in this family, starting with Carol’s mother, though directed at different family members and in some degree, at least, less in each generation. (Carol’s mother at Carol, Carol at Jake, Ro briefly at Charles). Can you discuss this as an element in your story?

OLIVA: My postpartum experience was pretty awful, and it was awful in ways that none of the reading I’d done about having a baby prepared me for—and I did a lot of reading! So, it was important to me to get the truth of that experience into this book. But I had access to information that Carol and her mother did not, and with Carol I really wanted to explore what might happen if someone was struggling with postpartum but didn’t have the resources, self-awareness, or community to help her through. Carol is a socially isolated woman in the 1980s who barely graduated high school: She has never heard the term postpartum depression. Her husband is likewise a product of his time and place. So, a huge undercurrent of this novel is the generational difference between Carol and Ro and how access to knowledge, community, and financial resources plays into how they each handle their postpartum experiences.

AUTHORLINK: Do you have a scientific background or what did you do to research the science in your story?

OLIVA: I do not have a scientific background, so research was hugely important to writing this book. My main source was the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop, which two astronomers run out of the University of Wyoming. It was an amazing week-long crash course in all things astronomy—I came away with over eighty pages of handwritten notes—as well as an opportunity to ask very specific questions. I could not have written this book without it. I wrote about the experience in more depth here, for anyone who’s interested.

AUTHORLINK: In other stories, such as The Three-Body Problem, communicating with aliens may or may not be such a good idea. In your story, while the main characters are thrilled with the idea, there are those who fear it and others who want to limit what earth reveals. What do you think?

OLIVA: At this point in time, I think if we were to encounter technologically advanced alien life, it would be very difficult to hide much about ourselves. Also, a single human lifetime is so brief on the cosmic scale that I believe it’s exceptionally unlikely that we’ll make contact with intelligent extraterrestrials in my lifetime, so it’s hard for me to guess how I would feel if we did. I imagine it would be some combination of excitement, awe, and fear, with the proportions depending on how everything unfolded. I am holding out hope that we might discover microscopic life elsewhere in the solar system during my lifetime, which would be truly awesome.

AUTHORLINK: What are you working on next?

OLIVA: I took a bit of a breather after finishing The Radiant Dark but am now in the early stages of a new novel. It’s too soon to talk about it—the bones are still settling—so please stay tuned!

About the author: Alexandria Oliva grew up in a tiny town in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. She graduated from Yale University and lived in Ireland and New York City. She received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from The New York School. She took the course at Boulder Outdoor Survival School to write her novel, The Last One, which combined a survival reality show with the apocalypse. She earned a Wilderness First Responder certificate to research her second novel, Forget Me Not, a near future literary thriller.