The Story - short version Why did God give physical form to the universe rather than keeping it in abstraction of His thoughts? Capable of the sublime - reaching the infinites, why is the human limited by the brevity of body's existence? Can one understand God if to do so one must think beyond the universe and the structures of comprehension imposed by Him?
Visiting one of Pluto's moon, the Poet witnesses the Event - a disturbance in time-space that makes humanity aware of the Others who reside in a star system 180 light years away. Though way beyond one's life, humanity sets out on a long-distance manned mission to the source of the signal.
92 years into their journey, the crew's sleep is interrupted. Their flight is canceled as advances in technology make the mission obsolete. The astronauts struggle to obey; inner demons rising within. The glory they thought would avait them, their fantasies of being the first ones to finally encounter aliens, is crushed…
Continuing their journey, they land on the planet exploring the Other's artifact - a Pyramid. Seeing how their physical presence changes the environment, the Poet ponders questions of time, space and mortality ultimately becoming one with the Pyramid that turns out to be the carcass of the Other who came from a universe without time and space. The Poet's body expands towards the edges of the universe, beyond infinity, becoming one with God.
In the book's last part, the Poet is back on Earth 364 years after takeoff. He's released from the asylum for long-distance astronauts who can't find themselves in the outside world into the hands of the Woman who's studying to become Human. He learns about the outside world based on perception rather than tangibility. He learns from her about the politics, economics, social relations and history that dramatically changed since his leaving. The book ends with their visit to a robot art collector who gathers future's trash: masterpieces of painting. The android laments how his existence by definition is detached from possibility of uniqueness, while humanity doesn't appreciate that gift.
The book ends with the Poet looking at the stars into the eyes of the reader.
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