In our starred review for An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, the debut novel from multimedia wizard Hank Green, we call his weird, fantastical novel about first contact with aliens “a fun, contemporary adventure that cares about who we are as humans.” Reached at home in Missoula, Montana, one of America’s most famous vloggers is clearly pleased with the results of a decade-long struggle to write a book.

“I don’t think that’s an original perspective; a lot of people want to have written a book,” Green says. “They want to see it on the shelf and join the ranks of people who have influenced them. I eventually realized that wasn’t the way in which a book gets written. I had to want to write a particular book.”

That book is a fiercely funny and often frenetic comic adventure in which levitating, massive alien sculptures are found scattered around the globe. There are consequences for artist April May, who dubs them “Carls,” and becomes massively Internet-famous for her part in unraveling their mystery.

“I love the moments where the goal is to inject a little bit of weirdness into the story because this is an uncanny story and needs to feel like it doesn’t make sense sometimes,” says Green. “It’s not an uncommon way for first contact scenarios to happen, for things to just appear suddenly. To have them suddenly appear makes them about something bigger than the story. If there is something unexplained that is just there, what is our reaction? I think it works in a way that all great science fiction does in that it gives you a chance to look at us, in situations that we have not yet and may never face.”

Green rates himself as “Tier-Three Famous”—that’s the one where you’re going to trend on Twitter if you die. Still, the enthusiastic followers (dubbed “Nerdfighters”) of Hank and his brother, bestselling YA novelist John Green, on their popular “Vlogbrothers” YouTube channel have given Green a sense of the pressure that someone like April would face in the wake of fame.

“It’s intense,” he admits. “Especially as a 38-year-old who has grown up in this environment, I feel a real responsibility to model good behavior, to try to make it a better place. It’s like living in a community. The Internet is set up to be a community that doesn’t think it needs social infrastructure, but it does. I don’t think we’ve created the norms to have the Internet be a functioning society. It’s very hard to forget how early we are here, and I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I don’t know if it ends up being better versions of the platforms we use now or if we ultimately end up abandoning these things and finding new ways that are on a more human scale.”

The novel is as funny and enjoyable as it sounds on the surface but Green concedes to ulterior motives hiding beneath the surface of his clever sci-fi comedy.

“I want readers to be able to think more critically about fame,” he says. “Most people sometimes see it as this obvious thing that would be nice to have but it’s more complicated than that. Ultimately, there’s a lot of life and success doesn’t always make everything better. It breaks a lot of things, too. I also hope readers see a story about people being good, both from a perspective of the people in this book being good people who care about each other and the world but also in starting a conversation about what humanity can do together.”

Clayton Moore is a freelance writer, journalist, book critic, and prolific interviewer of other writers.