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“Mr. Eternity” (Feb. 15)

Mr. Eternity

A Reading & Conversation with Aaron Thier

7 PM, February 15, 2017

The Chamber, Reitz Student Union

The University of Florida


Archived streaming video of this event is available here


Key West, 2016. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying. In short, everything is going to hell. It is here that two young filmmakers, propelled by drugs and irony, find something to believe in: a five hundred and sixty year old sailor who calls himself Daniel Defoe. In Mr. Eternity, novelist Aaron Thier recounts the ancient mariner’s incredible, eternal life in a genre-bending page-turner that spans one thousand years of high-seas adventure, environmental and cultural catastrophe, and enduring love.

Aaron Thier has been praised as “wickedly smart” and his 2016 novel as “twisted and wild” and “vividly inventive.” He will read selected passages from Mr. Eternity and discuss the opportunities and responsibilities of writing fiction in an era of climate crisis. For more information about Aaron Thier and links to his published fiction and non fiction, see this page.

Thier’s talk will be followed by a response from Jack E. Davis, UF Professor of History and author of The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, and An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century. The evening will conclude with a Q & A session with both speakers.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of English, the Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar, the Science Fiction Working Group, and Storm Richards and Jeanne Fillman-Richards. All ICC events are free and open to the public. No advance registration is required. For more information, contact Terry Harpold <tharpold@ufl.edu>.


“Mr. Eternity” has been certified a Green-Level Sustainable Event by the UF Office of Sustainability, in recognition of “the highest level of effort taken toward sustainability” with regard to event planning, purchasing, promotion, transportation, and hosting. For more information about the Sustainable Event Certification program see this link.


“Mr. Eternity” poster by Madeline Gangnes