Beyond the Human Realm

Humanity’s most ambitious proclamation is the controlled manipulation of the environment through language. Gene Helfman uses irony to subvert literary tropes in his self-published delve into science fantasy Beyond the Human Realm. The statistical idea that intelligence reigns beyond the human realm on Earth, like a biologist’s Fermi paradox, is irresistible to Helfman but he shies away from this claim for apparently metaphysical reasons. Such cruelty to the zeitgeist might be tough to subsidize, but the story that ensues is as engrossing and lively as the lulling crashes of the sea.

Beyond the Human Realm would benefit from a tonic—one that controls its prose to befit the algaeic population of ideas acidifying the book’s bulky organ. Unquestionably, it is an achievement of para scientific merit. Helfman shines a light away from the social issue and onto the biological toxicant, obscure but readily familiar.

Unfortunately, the book drags in pacing where it might captivate. Should the reader be a biologist or even an orca him/herself, they might sink with it and discover a piece of gold or two, for the price paid to go deep into the darkness is worth it not to the scout, but to the body to which he reports.