The Infinite Future
A Novel
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
£0.00 for first 30 days
LIMITED TIME OFFER
Get 3 months for £0.99/mo
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.
The Infinite Future
Narrated by:
Michael Crouch, Jonathan Davis, Hillary Huber, Phoebe Strole, Kristen Sieh, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Oliver Wyman, Carol Monda
Buy Now for £12.99
-
By:
-
Tim Wirkus
About this listen
The Infinite Future is a mindbending novel that melds two page-turning tales in one. In the first, we meet three broken people, joined by an obsession with a forgotten Brazilian science-fiction author named Salgado-MacKenzie. There's Danny, a writer who's been scammed by a shady literary award committee; Sergio, journalist turned sub-librarian in São Paulo; and Harriet, an excommunicated Mormon historian in Salt Lake City, who years ago corresponded with the reclusive Brazilian writer. The motley trio sets off to discover his identity, and whether his fabled masterpiece--never published--actually exists. Did his inquiries into the true nature of the universe yield something so enormous that his mind was blown for good?
In the second half, Wirkus gives us the lost masterpiece itself--the actual text of The Infinite Future, Salgado-MacKenzie's wonderfully weird magnum opus. The two stories merge in surprising and profound ways. Part science-fiction, part academic satire, and part book-lover's quest, this wholly original novel captures the heady way that stories inform and mirror our lives.
Audiobook Cast of Narrators:
Michael Crouch, as Danny
Jonathan Davis, as Sergio
Hillary Huber, as Harriet
Phoebe Strole, as Sister Ursula
Kristen Sieh, as Irena
Sean Patrick Hopkins, as Tim
Oliver Wyman, as Craig
Carol Monda, as Madge
Listeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
“Stupendously inventive and rewarding…The second half of Wirkus’ tale is…a sci-fi epic which echoes Battlestar Galactica and the fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin in equal measure…Especially well suited for fans of Jonathan Lethem and Ron Currie, this work announces Wirkus as one of the most exciting novelists of his generation.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Wirkus crafts two gripping sagas into one gloriously captivating tome.”—Paste
"Roberto Bolaño meets Ursula K. Le Guin meets James Hynes meets, um, Kilgore Trout? I'm having a difficult time being clever in the shadow of having read Tim Wirkus's magnificently audacious The Infinite Future. How about this: it's a book about the power and melancholy magic of the stories we tell and of the stories we live." – Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock
"Brilliant, playful, and profound, The Infinite Future offers its readers stories within stories within stories, all of them thrilling and wise. Tim Wirkus has written a strange and beautiful magic trick of a book, and I was enthralled. I loved it.” – Edan Lepucki, author of California and Woman No. 17
"The Infinite Future is uniquely pleasurable. Again and again it changes the terms of its telling—wrapping stories within stories and narrators within narrators, enclosing the mystical in the earthly and the fantastic in the realistic....Wirkus has a gift for maintaining a story's equilibrium, and with each new narrative layer he explores, I found myself instantly reinvested in the proceedings." – Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
“Tim Wirkus has worked wonders. The Infinite Future is an astonishing feat, a religious text wrapped in a science-fiction yarn wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a road trip wrapped in a snarky collegiate literary feud. At every turn it surprises and delights, and in the end it proves itself a deeply moving examination of what it means to tell—and more importantly, be told—stories.” – Forrest Leo, author of The Gentleman
"Tim Wirkus has channeled the ghost of Laurence Sterne and the imagination of René Magritte. From the foreword on I was taken by this novel. Entertaining, fun and very, very smart, the story is everywhere at once, but never lost. This is a house of mirrors worth entering." – Percival Everett, author of Erasure and Half an Inch of Water
—Booklist (starred review)
“Wirkus crafts two gripping sagas into one gloriously captivating tome.”—Paste
"Roberto Bolaño meets Ursula K. Le Guin meets James Hynes meets, um, Kilgore Trout? I'm having a difficult time being clever in the shadow of having read Tim Wirkus's magnificently audacious The Infinite Future. How about this: it's a book about the power and melancholy magic of the stories we tell and of the stories we live." – Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock
"Brilliant, playful, and profound, The Infinite Future offers its readers stories within stories within stories, all of them thrilling and wise. Tim Wirkus has written a strange and beautiful magic trick of a book, and I was enthralled. I loved it.” – Edan Lepucki, author of California and Woman No. 17
"The Infinite Future is uniquely pleasurable. Again and again it changes the terms of its telling—wrapping stories within stories and narrators within narrators, enclosing the mystical in the earthly and the fantastic in the realistic....Wirkus has a gift for maintaining a story's equilibrium, and with each new narrative layer he explores, I found myself instantly reinvested in the proceedings." – Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
“Tim Wirkus has worked wonders. The Infinite Future is an astonishing feat, a religious text wrapped in a science-fiction yarn wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a road trip wrapped in a snarky collegiate literary feud. At every turn it surprises and delights, and in the end it proves itself a deeply moving examination of what it means to tell—and more importantly, be told—stories.” – Forrest Leo, author of The Gentleman
"Tim Wirkus has channeled the ghost of Laurence Sterne and the imagination of René Magritte. From the foreword on I was taken by this novel. Entertaining, fun and very, very smart, the story is everywhere at once, but never lost. This is a house of mirrors worth entering." – Percival Everett, author of Erasure and Half an Inch of Water
Wonderful book!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The basic story is three people go on a quest to find a lost science fiction masterpiece and it's author.
The trouble is the quest is dull and the lost masterpiece is rubbish.
I get that there's another story about people trying to reconcile their religious beliefs, their church and their own feelings and experiences, but to be honest I couldn't care less, I'm not engaged with the characters enough to care and the religious mumbojumbo does not interest me in the slightest.
Much of the writing reads like it was produced by a teenager who has just discovered adjectives and was given a thesaurus for Christmas, someone who will never use a simple word where a long and obscure one can be used instead. It doesn't make the writing style very pleasant to listen to.
This is one that will be going back for a refund.
Weird, but not in a good way
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.