THE PROFESSOR focuses on the struggle to find a basis for spiritual hope at a time when such hope does not seem to fit well within modern science. It scrutinizes the human implications of end-of-the-universe cosmology, but it does so with an emotional innerness that nonfiction simply cannot deliver.
The eponymous central character of this novella is a highly accomplished physics professor at a small liberal-arts university in Oregon. In the wake of a student suicide, the narrator (a therapist in the university’s overworked mental-health clinic) learns that the professor has been confronting his students—including the freshman who has just shot himself—with the Big Freeze most cosmologists now identify as the universe’s ultimate destiny, instilling in them the bleak conviction that the final extinction of the cosmos exposes all current human hopes as temporal illusions. And this psychological thriller starts…

About Bryce Christensen’s writings: “Christensen’s philosophical style will appeal to all readers, along with prose delivered with a luring cadence that at times comes very close to poetic. A poignant, thought-provoking story providing a galvanizing look at family dynamics, inner struggles, and the impetus behind certain driven behaviors, this book will hold the reader’s attention until the end.” —Christy Tillery French, author of The Bodyguard


Bryce Christensen is emeritus professor of English at Southern Utah University, where he regularly taught a course on “Science and Human Values.” In 2019-2020, he taught American literature at National Taiwan University in Taipei as a visiting Fulbright professor. Repeatedly anthologized, his poetry has appeared in The Formalist, First Things, Modern Age, Chronicles, North American Anglican and elsewhere. He is the author of the previous novel Winning (Whiskey Creek Press) and of ‘The Portals of Sheol’ and Other Poems (White Violet Press). He and his wife, Mary, are the parents of three children and the grandparents of seven grandchildren.


Title: The professor
Author: Bryce Christensen
Publisher: Adelaide Books
Publisher Website: https://adelaidebooks.org/
Publisher Email: [email protected]
ISBN: 978-1955196475
Price: $19.60
Page Count: 140 pages
Formats: Paperback

Description of the company: ADELAIDE BOOKS LLC is a New York based independent company dedicated to publishing literary fiction and creative nonfiction. It was founded in July 2017 as an imprint of the Adelaide Literary Magazine, with the aim to facilitate publishing of novels, memoirs, and collections of short stories, poems, and essays by contributing authors of our magazine and other qualified writers.