According to a recent You.gov poll, nearly half of Americans believe that aliens have visited the Earth. So many science fiction literature and movies have speculated about alien invasions and encounters. A new book, Hole In The Sky, by New York Times best-selling Daniel H. Wilson re-envisions a first contact invasion from an Indigenous perspective.

Wilson is a Cherokee citizen and Portland author of about several novels including the New York Times bestseller Robopocalypse, as well as many nonfiction books, and countless short stories and graphic novels. Wilson is a renowned roboticist and engineer with a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon who has worked in recent years as a threat forecaster for NASA and the U.S. Air Force (Blue Horizons). His newest book HOLE IN THE SKY, was recently chosen by Scientific American magazine as a best pick for 2025. It’s just been picked by Netflix to become a film produced by Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Films with Wilson adapting the screenplay. Wilson’s fellow Oklahoman and friend, Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs), is set to direct. Read more about the adaptation process in Space.com.

SYNOPSIS: Hole In The Sky follows a newly sober Native father on a quest to repair his fractured relationship with his daughter, a foul-mouthed astrophysicist whose AR glasses begin to send her mysterious messages, and a by-the-books government agent as they brace for the arrival of a non-human intelligence that threatens our understanding of reality. Unlike a typical alien invasion story (which tends to mirror what generations of colonizers have done to Indigenous people), HOLE IN THE SKY draws on Native mythologies and cosmologies about what lies beyond our world, embracing the unknown rather than seeking to control or destroy it.

DANIEL H. WILSON is a Cherokee citizen and author of the New York Times bestselling Robopocalypse and its sequel Robogenesis, as well as How to Survive a Robot Uprising, The Clockwork Dynasty, and The Andromeda Evolution (an authorized sequel to The Andromeda Strain). He earned a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as master’s degrees in machine learning and robotics. Wilson lives in Portland, Oregon.