"My name is Jakub Procházka. This is a common name. My parents wanted a simple life for me, a life of good comradeship with my country and my neighbors, a life of service to a world united in socialism. Then the Iron Curtain tumbled with a dull thud and the bogeyman invaded my country with his consumer love and free markets."
The opening paragraph of the novel is of the most straightforward introductory type. Over the course of just 60 words, pertinent information such as the name of the protagonist, narrative perspective, cultural and ethnic background, and hints of the time period of the setting are relayed. By the end of the next paragraph, Jakub has added that he is and was extended the opportunity to westernize his name. He refused. The reference to the collapse of the Iron Curtain and socialism are essential historical clues that help to more narrowly define the setting which has formed Jakub’s political and cultural identity. As even more precise details follow, the particularities of his background will prove to be absolutely integral to the timeline of events leading to his moment in history.
"Nearly a year and a half ago, a previously undiscovered comet had entered the Milky Way from the Canis Major galaxy and swept our solar system with a sandstorm of intergalactic cosmic dust. A cloud had formed between Venus and Earth, an unprecedented phenomenon named Chopra by its discoverers in New Delhi, and bathed Earth’s nights in purple zodiacal light, altering the sky we had known since the birth of man."
Jakub’s moment in history is the result of a convergence of historical events and exercises of his own free will, but the single most significant contribution traces perhaps as far back as the very origin of the universe. Without the creation of that comet billions of years ago and the setting of its trajectory through the cosmos would have been significantly different. The description of the purplish light resulting from the arrival of the comet into our galaxy as zodiacal is significant because this is a story about fate from the heavens actually determining daily activity and decision-making. The most important decision is literally who on earth is going to go into space to conduct an up-close study of this phenomenon. Chopra essentially becomes Jakub’s astrological sign responsible for his daily horoscope.
"The eight hairy legs shot out of the thick barrel of its body like tent poles. Each had three joints the size of a medicine ball, at which the legs bent to the lack of gravity. Thin gray fur covered its torso and legs, sprouting chaotically, like alfalfa. It had many eyes, too many to count, red-veined, with irises as black as Space itself. Beneath the eyes rested a set of thick human lips, startlingly red, lipstick red, and as the lips parted, the creature revealed a set of yellowing teeth which resembled those of an average human smoker."
Jakub is sent into the space to conduct an up-close analysis of the effects of the comet alone, but he does not stay in isolation for long. At first, he is convinced that the spider-like alien creature is merely a figment of his imagination. And then it begins to speak, and develop a taste for Nutella, and tell him its named. A creature calling itself Hanuš with a fondness for hazelnut is not, generally speaking, the sort of thing one constitutes full-blown as a delusion. It is oddly specific and so Jakub has little choice but to accept that Hanuš is an actual alien entity. Long philosophical discourses conducted through telepathy ensue with the strange result being that the spider-alien is perhaps the closest thing to a traditional science fiction element in the story.
