I would imagine it a daunting challenge to meld a compelling storyline, interesting characters you care about, and, of all things, physics–and to do so in a few thousand words would seem more daunting still. But that is what Brian Greene has accomplished in Icarus at the Edge of Time.

In the space of a few dozen pages, with gorgeous full color imagery, we are brought into the world of a futuristic Icarus, living aboard a spaceship racing for the stars. When a black hole intervenes, Icarus can’t resist his urge to explore it, and Greene cleverly uses this analog of the original (Icarus’s journey near the sun) to combine the ancient myth with up-to-date astrophysics. The result is quietly wonderful.

The original myth has stayed with us as long as it has because children will always have a rebellious streak and will always, at some point, challenge their parent’s wisdom. In Greene’s hands, the myth takes on a more nuanced character as Icarus doesn’t die but instead suffers a different, more startling outcome.

I read the story to my 5 year old and he loved it. I’m not sure how much he understood about black holes and the science of the ending, but the story carried him (the telltale sign–he asked me to read it again tonight) and he’s been asking all sorts of questions about space travel and gravity. (I don’t think he knew the word gravity before this book.) This morning my husband read it (his more of a science buff and knows Greene from his other books), and thought the book a moving way to illustrate complex science. For me, I don’t know much science, but feel that if I’d been introduced to the subject by a book like this, I would have wanted to learn more. I do now. And I didn’t expect that.

Bravo.