Description: 1. How do the different landscapes--space and the Arctic--reflect the characters and their inner journeys? 2. Did you find it difficult to sympathize with Augustine? Did your opinion of him change as the book progressed? 3. Iris's presence at the observatory is a mystery for some time--how did you explain it? Or did you just accept it and keep reading? 4. What does the polar bear Augustine keeps seeing represent? Is it real? 5. By the end of the novel, readers might begin to question Augustine's grip on reality. What do you think really happened in the Arctic storyline? 6. When did you realize how Augustine and Sully are connected? Why do you think they never understand how they are related to each other? 7. How does Sully's past, both in her childhood and with her own family, influence her time on Aether? In what ways does she revisit the themes she has struggled with since her youth? 8. How do the other astronauts and Sully's relationships to them change her over the course of the book? 9. Did the final two chapters of the book surprise you at all? Were there any mysteries solved for you? Any lingering questions? 10. The book poses questions about what truly matters in the end--about what's important. Did you come away with any answers? How did the story illustrate these answers? 11. In the end, the mystery of what happened to civilization goes unsolved. How did you interpret this omission?

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