A Fractured Infinity

Tavares’s ambitious debut asks how far a man would go to hold onto his soulmate. Filmmaker Hayes Figueiredo is plucked from his remote cabin by a team of scientists led by the awkward but gorgeous Yusuf Hassan. In the depths of the scientists’ top-secret Nevada facility lies a strange machine that, they believe, offers oracular predictions of the future—and which contains hours of video that show Hayes building the machine alongside a different Yusuf in a parallel universe where they are happily married to each other. Hayes doesn’t have the answers the scientists hope for, but as he fudges his way onto the team, he grows closer to both the machine and Yusuf. When a crisis leaves Yusuf’s life hanging in the balance, Hayes uses the machine to bring a different universe’s Yusuf—one who lives—into his own world. But this is a stolen future; now the alternate universe Yusuf is dead, and the alternate-universe Hayes is bent on revenge. Meanwhile, Hayes’s actions doom his world to a deadly parade of disasters. After a slow and murky start, Tavares hits the gas, sending the plot rocketing through dozens of fascinating possible Earths. The epic love story forms an intense emotional core and Hayes’s conversational narration charms. Anyone looking for queer sci-fi should check this out. (Nov.)