Cosmic

Cosmic engages with deep philosophical questions about identity, significance, and the human condition. When Liam is alone in space, staring at Earth floating in darkness, the scene is reminiscent of Blaise Pascal’s reflection on humanity’s smallness: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me” (Pascal, Blaise. Pascal’s Pensées. EP Dutton & Co, 1959, No. 206. Project Gutenberg, 2006.). Liam confronts that same silence and vastness when he finds himself drifting around the moon, reflecting on his insignificance. In that moment, the book transitions from a coming-of-age narrative to a meditation on existence itself.

However, the novel also engages with Einstein’s notion of relativity, not just in the scientific sense, but in the sense that a change in perspective shifts perceptions. Though there is some debate about how the quote should be rendered in English, Einstein said the following in a 1950 letter to his friend David Marcus, as translated from the German by Alice Calaprice:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.