Believe it or not, I know people who don’t enjoy MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. The jokes fly by so fast, and the references can be so obscure that they become frustrated. When told to let the performance wash over them and to glean what they will, they sullenly reply that it’s not for them. Sigh.

Some such reaction greeted the extraordinary medieval tale of Umberto Eco, THE NAME OF THE ROSE. Even as the book flew off store shelves and acquired new readers from impassioned word-of-mouth campaigns, there were some who complained about its religiosity, its use of foreign language, its refusal to dumb things down and make everything crystal clear, its essential mystery.

It’s not really a fair comparison to pit Michael Flynn’s EIFELHEIM against a comedic commentary series and Eco’s masterwork, but there are similarities between all three. The authorial presence, the sheer confidence with which Flynn rattles off complicated scientific concepts, the casualness when he imparts major clues to the reader, the subject matter itself, the one-line witticisms, the willingness to let things stand in their own actuality instead of using some hackneyed metaphor, to call an aquamanile an aquamanile when necessary, is reminiscent of both Mike Nelson and Umberto Eco. And that’s a very good thing indeed.

EIFELHEIM has two parallel stories: one set in 1348 in Germany, and a contemporary tale featuring Tom and Sharon. Sharon is a theoretical physicist studying the dimensionality of space and time. Tom is a historian of mathematics interested in population distributions. He has discovered the medieval town of Eifelheim and its mysterious demise. Towns and villages become obsolete or are abandoned for many reasons. But almost without fail, a successor town comes to occupy that space or a nearby location. Tom is confused that there was a flourishing village in this one German location for seven centuries or more, and then, after 1349, there was nothing in that area ever again.

While Tom is doing his exploring among library stacks and historical archives, we are treated to the real story of 1348-era Eifelheim through the eyes of its intelligent pastor, Father Dietrich. The author does a phenomenal job of building this small village, making us feel and understand its social network, introducing us to innumerable villagers, and how their relationships work together.

You see Eifelheim and its citizens as real. And then they come.

Foreigners appear in the woods outside the village. At first sight, many villagers proclaim these newcomers to be demons, devils, an affront to God. It is only the gentle and curious Dietrich who wins their trust and slowly introduces them to the glory of Christianity. These newcomers don’t look like humans; in fact, they are often referred to as grasshoppers. Well, I think you can see where this is going, can’t you?

And what a long, strange journey it is. Flynn packs this book with obscure debates in natural philosophy, Christian teachings and morals, and insanely difficult discussions of physics and the space-time continuum. It is a fruitful mix of medieval fantasy and hard science fiction.

I don’t have the intellectual firepower to even guess if Janatpour space exists, but it doesn’t matter, because Flynn has convinced me it is possible. He makes both worlds – the medieval German town and the modern couple trying to determine the likelihood of interstellar travel – real, physical and emotional.

You may not get every reference or even follow some of the discourses, but you should be impressed by the deep learning, the equally deep level of humanitarianism and Christian charity, and the quality of writing that can make you believe a small German medieval village was visited by a group of otherworldly travelers. And then shunned for eternity thereafter.

A remarkably rich and dense work, EIFELHEIM instantly slotted itself into my top 10 books of the year list. –Mark Rose

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