Ark (Baxter novel)
Encyclopedia
Ark is a hard science fiction
novel by UK author Stephen Baxter
. It comes as the sequel to Baxter's acclaimed 2008 novel Flood
. Ark deals with the journey of Ark One, which Baxter has revealed to be a long-range spaceship, and the continuing human struggle for survival on Earth after the catastrophic events of Flood. It was published August 20, 2009 by Gollancz
.
, causing a considerable influx of internally displaced persons ("eye-dees" is a derogatory term used to describe them). For the moment, Denver and most of Colorado
are safe from harm, and has become the new capitol of a drowning United States. Although civil war is brewing with separatist Utah
over control of untainted fresh water
supplies and former Interstate Highway System
roads. With the future of humanity uncertain, affluent inhabitants of the United States and remaining elements of NASA
have funded a desperate and far-fetched get-away plan called 'Nimrod'; to ensure the continued survival of the human race, they construct a massive interstellar spacecraft from conjoined and modified Ares rockets
and Space shuttle components
that is capable of superluminal
travel, and is christened as 'Ark One' under the sponsorship of the AxysCorp mega-corporation. The plan is that the children and descendants of those who built the ship will travel to a neighboring earth-like exosolar planet to start civilization anew, given that shortly before the onset of the Flood, SETI
technology had advanced to the point where it could detect potentially habitable worlds in other planetary systems.
The main character, Holle Groundwater, is the daughter of one affluent man, Patrick, who were first introduced to the project by Jerzy Glemp, a former Polish
millionaire; his shy but intellectually-gifted son, Zane, becomes Holly's best friend as he helps her progress through the project's elite scientific education program to become a candidate for one of the ship's many specific functions each person must contribute, with her specializing in spacecraft life support and Zane as the Ark's warp drive specialist. Other candidates are introduced and excluded due to the brutal training regime of the project, for the candidates in question are required to have specialized fields of knowledge for either the ship's function and/or for preservation of mankind's history, knowledge, and culture; and to create a secular-minded crew with a diverse gene pool to breed. Kelly Kenzie becomes the designated mission leader during the first phases of the mission, Wilson Argent is her sometime partner who succeeds her as mission commander later in the book; and with Venus Jenning is the Ark's celestial navigator. As noted above, there is some overlap between the earlier novel in this trilogy and its successor - aging astronaut Gordo Alonzo and Thandie Jones, the bisexual oceanographer from Flood, appear as influential characters, and Grace Gray is also a pivotal character, as is her daughter Helen, who is born on the Ark en route to its initial interstellar destination.
During the 2030s, President Linda Vasquez serves four terms of office under the crisis conditions and the remnants of the federal government and armed forces take over control of the Nimrod
Project. During that time, experimental use of antimatter
propulsion results in several tragedies and triumphs, all the while the floodwaters rise inexorably. By 2041, the Ark is ready to be launched, although a relentless selection process has reduced the number of potential candidates to eighty in number. On the day of the launch, desperate civilians and military personnel escaping the approaching floodwaters attempt to storm the Ark, resulting in a hurried evacuation of the candidates to the starship in question. The chaotic launch is successful, but causes fatal irradiation
of the surrounding area, owing to the use of nuclear fission
– powered thruster technology (derived from Project Orion (nuclear propulsion)
of the 1960s).
Once the Ark has left Earth orbit to get under way, the crew find that they have inadvertently left some prior designated candidates behind, and some of the security personnel make a failed attempt at mutiny to find a new life shipboard. In addition, some of the female candidates are pregnant and give birth to children who become a shipboard generation. By 2042, they have harvested enough antimatter from Jupiter's
magnetosphere
to propel their warp drive starship to 82 Eridani
's planetary system, twenty-one light-years from the Sol System, which is reached nine years later. By that time, most of Earth now lies underwater and Mount Everest
is calculated to become submerged in 2052.
However, problems arise, due to the nature of the targeted planet, designated "Earth II." Although 82 Eridani is a yellow G5 star, it turns out that the 'earthlike' world in question is on the fringe of its planetary system ecosphere
and the prospects of prolonged extremes of temperature are further worsened by a high axial tilt
relative to the system's ecliptic (rather like that of Uranus
in our own solar system). (This planetary configuration, called "Urania", is used by Baxter in his story "Grey Earth". It is ultimately derived from a book called What If the Moon Didn't Exist
?.) There is debate and in-fighting over what to do next, but the crew come to an agreement as Zane proposes to split the ship and crew up. One colonizes Earth II, while another led by Kelly travels back to Earth in one of Ark One's twin hulls, Seba
, making planetfall in 2059.
A third faction with Holly, Wilson, Grace, Venus, and Zane takes the ship's other hull, Halivah, and takes a further thirty years to travel outward to an (unnamed) M6 red dwarf
star and its super-earth
terrestrial world, designated "Earth III" and situated 111 light years
from Earth, within Lepus (constellation)
. Unfortunately, generational tensions arise between the rebellious youth born on the ship and the original crew, with Wilson forming a gang-like leadership breeding with the majority of the females on board. Things are further worsened by Zane's dissociative identity disorder
which he slowly developed from sexual and psychological abuse earlier in the book from his overbearing father; his fragmented pessimist
personalities preach to the younger crew and make them disillusioned of the idea that they are all enclosed and observed from the 'outside world' in a simulated bio-sphere environment as a social experiment. Eventually this all leads to further mutiny as the younger crew try to break out of the ship, which consequently results in ship-wide explosive decompression
that inflicts a large loss of life and causes the destruction of one of the onboard shuttle-based landing craft. Once recovering from the incident, Holle forcibly takes command by reluctantly forming a dictatorship under her rule, using threats to shut off life support for those who do not partake in the maintenance of the ship's systems to keep order except for those who are too vital for the ship, as done with Zane as she orders him to be isolated and kept alive only for the purposes of keeping the warp drive functional. This act shatters the friendships of the original crew, and with no hope to help his deteriorating state of mind and being kept alone, unloved, and alive as merely a tool as he had for most of his life, Zane commits suicide.
While this is occurring, the floodwaters inundate Denver, and Kelly's ex-husband Don, Gordo, and Mel, ex-Candidate and Holle's former lover make a last stand at Alma, Colorado
, which was the nearest habitable area near the former starship launch site and Mission Control for the Ark before it departed from Jupiter. In the ensuing melee, Don is killed.
In 2061, when Seba returns to Earth
, Lily Brooke (Flood
s principal protagonist) has been dead for the last three years. Thandie Jones continues to survive and has links to 'Ark Two', which turns out to be a (new) and expansive seafloor settlement
which taps the geothermal
energy from the submerged former Yellowstone National Park's supercaldera
. Kelly meets her aged father, Edward Kenzie, and her estranged son Dexter, whom she voluntarily abandoned for a place on board. Mel has also survived, but Gordo Alonzo died defending Ark Two from ID interlopers before the rising floodwaters made further interference impossible. Human genetic engineering is postulated to assist the descendants of Ark Two to adapt to their new and arduous and environmental conditions. This idea ("pantropy
"), used by James Blish
in his story suite The Seedling Stars
, is a powerful theme in almost all of Baxter's fictional series.
Two years before Halivah arrives at Earth III, Venus intercepted a strong, brief signal of unknown origin and was not repeated (similar to the Wow! signal
), and it is speculated to be extraterrestrial. She keeps the knowledge of the signal to herself.
In 2081, the ship arrives at Earth III which turns out to be in a close proximity to its parent star, its surface is active with volcanoes and its climate frigidly cold from the weak solar heating of the red dwarf along with one side permanently facing away from the star
, but the planet is nonetheless habitable enough to support photosynthetic
life and by extension, human life. With only one landing craft left after the mutiny years earlier, Holle is forced to halve the crew through a careful selection of those to colonize the planet, specifically young children who are as diverse as possible to eliminate the risk of inbreeding. Wilson is selected to go for he is the only one who could fly the shuttle despite his age, and finally Helen is selected to go to educate the young colonists for the process of building a functional colony to prosper. After a painful goodbye to her mother Grace, and to her own children, Helen and the settlers disembark. However, Holle and Venus resolve to explore the star system's other planets using small warp-jumps. The novel is left open-ended: Wilson, Helen, and the forty children on board the shuttle craft successfully land on Earth III, set foot on its surface and begin planning for rebuilding human civilization while they see the Ark for the last time before it disappears into the cosmos, suggesting that the starship has effectively become a generation ship
until the rebuilt civilization of Earth III, that may not rise for decades, centuries, or even millennia to become spaceflight capable, can reunite with the descendants of the Ark.
Two pendant stories have been published since in Asimov's Science Fiction
: "Earth II" and "Earth III"; each deals with characters struggling with the legacy of Ark One's colonization of their world in the face of military consolidation of the planets. As of April 2010, it is unclear whether there will be further continuance of the stories.
s, interstellar Alcubierre
warp drive vessels, Project Orion
and exosolar planets. The references can be found on pp. 456–457.
, Eric Brown gave the novel a very positive review, concluding that “Never has Baxter presented a more thrilling and moving glimpse of a possible future: Ark could well be his masterpiece.” In The Times
, Lisa Tuttle
also wrote approvingly, calling Ark “a grim but exciting tale of the ultimate in pioneering adventure, in the most unforgiving environment of all.”
Hard science fiction
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science...
novel by UK author Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter is a prolific British hard science fiction author. He has degrees in mathematics and engineering.- Writing style :...
. It comes as the sequel to Baxter's acclaimed 2008 novel Flood
Flood (Baxter novel)
Published in 2008, Flood is the work of hard science fiction by English author Stephen Baxter. It describes a near future world where deep submarine seismic activity leads to seabed fragmentation, and the opening of deep subterranean reservoirs of water. Human civilization is almost destroyed by...
. Ark deals with the journey of Ark One, which Baxter has revealed to be a long-range spaceship, and the continuing human struggle for survival on Earth after the catastrophic events of Flood. It was published August 20, 2009 by Gollancz
Gollancz
Gollancz often refers to the British publishing house Victor Gollancz Ltd.Gollancz, a family name originating from the Polish town Gołańcz , is mainly known as the name of a prominent British Jewish family, including:* Sir Hermann Gollancz , rabbi* Sir Israel Gollancz , scholar of...
.
Plot summary
Readers are initially introduced to the principal characters in a flashback to 2031. At this time, the rising sea levels have inundated most of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America and the flood waters have risen as far north as KentuckyKentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
, causing a considerable influx of internally displaced persons ("eye-dees" is a derogatory term used to describe them). For the moment, Denver and most of Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
are safe from harm, and has become the new capitol of a drowning United States. Although civil war is brewing with separatist Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
over control of untainted fresh water
Fresh Water
Fresh Water is the debut album by Australian rock and blues singer Alison McCallum, released in 1972. Rare for an Australian artist at the time, it came in a gatefold sleeve...
supplies and former Interstate Highway System
Interstate Highway System
The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, , is a network of limited-access roads including freeways, highways, and expressways forming part of the National Highway System of the United States of America...
roads. With the future of humanity uncertain, affluent inhabitants of the United States and remaining elements of NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
have funded a desperate and far-fetched get-away plan called 'Nimrod'; to ensure the continued survival of the human race, they construct a massive interstellar spacecraft from conjoined and modified Ares rockets
Ares V
The Ares V was the planned cargo launch component of the Constellation program, which was to have replaced the Space Shuttle after its retirement in 2011. Ares V was also planned to carry supplies for a human presence on Mars...
and Space shuttle components
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
that is capable of superluminal
Faster-than-light
Faster-than-light communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light....
travel, and is christened as 'Ark One' under the sponsorship of the AxysCorp mega-corporation. The plan is that the children and descendants of those who built the ship will travel to a neighboring earth-like exosolar planet to start civilization anew, given that shortly before the onset of the Flood, SETI
SETI
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Some of the most well known projects are run by the SETI Institute. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for intelligent life...
technology had advanced to the point where it could detect potentially habitable worlds in other planetary systems.
The main character, Holle Groundwater, is the daughter of one affluent man, Patrick, who were first introduced to the project by Jerzy Glemp, a former Polish
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
millionaire; his shy but intellectually-gifted son, Zane, becomes Holly's best friend as he helps her progress through the project's elite scientific education program to become a candidate for one of the ship's many specific functions each person must contribute, with her specializing in spacecraft life support and Zane as the Ark's warp drive specialist. Other candidates are introduced and excluded due to the brutal training regime of the project, for the candidates in question are required to have specialized fields of knowledge for either the ship's function and/or for preservation of mankind's history, knowledge, and culture; and to create a secular-minded crew with a diverse gene pool to breed. Kelly Kenzie becomes the designated mission leader during the first phases of the mission, Wilson Argent is her sometime partner who succeeds her as mission commander later in the book; and with Venus Jenning is the Ark's celestial navigator. As noted above, there is some overlap between the earlier novel in this trilogy and its successor - aging astronaut Gordo Alonzo and Thandie Jones, the bisexual oceanographer from Flood, appear as influential characters, and Grace Gray is also a pivotal character, as is her daughter Helen, who is born on the Ark en route to its initial interstellar destination.
During the 2030s, President Linda Vasquez serves four terms of office under the crisis conditions and the remnants of the federal government and armed forces take over control of the Nimrod
Nimrod
Nimrod means "Hunter"; was a Biblical Mesopotamian king mentioned in the Table of Nations; an eponym for the city of Nimrud.Nimrod can also refer to any of the following:*Nimród Antal, a director...
Project. During that time, experimental use of antimatter
Antimatter
In particle physics, antimatter is the extension of the concept of the antiparticle to matter, where antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles...
propulsion results in several tragedies and triumphs, all the while the floodwaters rise inexorably. By 2041, the Ark is ready to be launched, although a relentless selection process has reduced the number of potential candidates to eighty in number. On the day of the launch, desperate civilians and military personnel escaping the approaching floodwaters attempt to storm the Ark, resulting in a hurried evacuation of the candidates to the starship in question. The chaotic launch is successful, but causes fatal irradiation
Irradiation
Irradiation is the process by which an object is exposed to radiation. The exposure can originate from various sources, including natural sources. Most frequently the term refers to ionizing radiation, and to a level of radiation that will serve a specific purpose, rather than radiation exposure to...
of the surrounding area, owing to the use of nuclear fission
Nuclear fission
In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts , often producing free neutrons and photons , and releasing a tremendous amount of energy...
– powered thruster technology (derived from Project Orion (nuclear propulsion)
Project Orion (nuclear propulsion)
Project Orion was a study of a spacecraft intended to be directly propelled by a series of explosions of atomic bombs behind the craft...
of the 1960s).
Once the Ark has left Earth orbit to get under way, the crew find that they have inadvertently left some prior designated candidates behind, and some of the security personnel make a failed attempt at mutiny to find a new life shipboard. In addition, some of the female candidates are pregnant and give birth to children who become a shipboard generation. By 2042, they have harvested enough antimatter from Jupiter's
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
magnetosphere
Magnetosphere
A magnetosphere is formed when a stream of charged particles, such as the solar wind, interacts with and is deflected by the intrinsic magnetic field of a planet or similar body. Earth is surrounded by a magnetosphere, as are the other planets with intrinsic magnetic fields: Mercury, Jupiter,...
to propel their warp drive starship to 82 Eridani
82 Eridani
82 G. Eridani is a star about 20 light years away from Earth. It is in the constellation Eridanus. It is a main sequence star of spectral type G5.-Observation:...
's planetary system, twenty-one light-years from the Sol System, which is reached nine years later. By that time, most of Earth now lies underwater and Mount Everest
Mount Everest
Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...
is calculated to become submerged in 2052.
However, problems arise, due to the nature of the targeted planet, designated "Earth II." Although 82 Eridani is a yellow G5 star, it turns out that the 'earthlike' world in question is on the fringe of its planetary system ecosphere
Ecosphere
Ecosphere has several different meanings:* In ecology the term ecosphere can refer to the Earth's spheres, a planetary ecosystem consisting of the atmosphere, the geosphere , the hydrosphere, and the biosphere....
and the prospects of prolonged extremes of temperature are further worsened by a high axial tilt
Axial tilt
In astronomy, axial tilt is the angle between an object's rotational axis, and a line perpendicular to its orbital plane...
relative to the system's ecliptic (rather like that of Uranus
Uranus
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System. It is named after the ancient Greek deity of the sky Uranus , the father of Cronus and grandfather of Zeus...
in our own solar system). (This planetary configuration, called "Urania", is used by Baxter in his story "Grey Earth". It is ultimately derived from a book called What If the Moon Didn't Exist
What If the Moon Didn't Exist
What if the Moon Didn’t Exist is a collection of speculative articles about different versions of Earth. They were originally published in Astronomy magazine...
?.) There is debate and in-fighting over what to do next, but the crew come to an agreement as Zane proposes to split the ship and crew up. One colonizes Earth II, while another led by Kelly travels back to Earth in one of Ark One's twin hulls, Seba
Seba
Sebastian Ahrenberg, better known as Seba is a drum and bass producer and DJ hailing originally from Ingarö, an island just outside of Stockholm, Sweden. Seba is also the owner of Secret Operations, a drum and bass record label.-Musical career:...
, making planetfall in 2059.
A third faction with Holly, Wilson, Grace, Venus, and Zane takes the ship's other hull, Halivah, and takes a further thirty years to travel outward to an (unnamed) M6 red dwarf
Red dwarf
According to the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a red dwarf star is a small and relatively cool star, of the main sequence, either late K or M spectral type....
star and its super-earth
Super-Earth
A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth's, but substantially below the mass of the Solar System's gas giants. The term super-Earth refers only to the mass of the planet, and does not imply anything about the surface conditions or habitability...
terrestrial world, designated "Earth III" and situated 111 light years
Light Years
Light Years is the seventh studio album by Australian recording artist Kylie Minogue. It was released on 25 September 2000 by Parlophone and Mushroom Records. The album's style was indicative of her return to "mainstream pop dance tunes"....
from Earth, within Lepus (constellation)
Lepus (constellation)
Lepus is a constellation lying just south of the celestial equator, immediately south of Orion. Its name is Latin for hare. Although the hare does not represent any particular figure in Greek mythology, Lepus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it...
. Unfortunately, generational tensions arise between the rebellious youth born on the ship and the original crew, with Wilson forming a gang-like leadership breeding with the majority of the females on board. Things are further worsened by Zane's dissociative identity disorder
Dissociative identity disorder
Dissociative identity disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis and describes a condition in which a person displays multiple distinct identities , each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment....
which he slowly developed from sexual and psychological abuse earlier in the book from his overbearing father; his fragmented pessimist
Pessimism
Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...
personalities preach to the younger crew and make them disillusioned of the idea that they are all enclosed and observed from the 'outside world' in a simulated bio-sphere environment as a social experiment. Eventually this all leads to further mutiny as the younger crew try to break out of the ship, which consequently results in ship-wide explosive decompression
Explosive decompression
Uncontrolled decompression refers to an unplanned drop in the pressure of a sealed system, such as an aircraft cabin and typically results from human error, material fatigue, engineering failure or impact causing a pressure vessel to vent into its lower-pressure surroundings or fail to pressurize...
that inflicts a large loss of life and causes the destruction of one of the onboard shuttle-based landing craft. Once recovering from the incident, Holle forcibly takes command by reluctantly forming a dictatorship under her rule, using threats to shut off life support for those who do not partake in the maintenance of the ship's systems to keep order except for those who are too vital for the ship, as done with Zane as she orders him to be isolated and kept alive only for the purposes of keeping the warp drive functional. This act shatters the friendships of the original crew, and with no hope to help his deteriorating state of mind and being kept alone, unloved, and alive as merely a tool as he had for most of his life, Zane commits suicide.
While this is occurring, the floodwaters inundate Denver, and Kelly's ex-husband Don, Gordo, and Mel, ex-Candidate and Holle's former lover make a last stand at Alma, Colorado
Alma, Colorado
The historic Town of Alma is a Statutory Town located in Park County, Colorado, United States. The town population was 179 at the U.S. Census 2000....
, which was the nearest habitable area near the former starship launch site and Mission Control for the Ark before it departed from Jupiter. In the ensuing melee, Don is killed.
In 2061, when Seba returns to Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, Lily Brooke (Flood
Flood
A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land. The EU Floods directive defines a flood as a temporary covering by water of land not normally covered by water...
s principal protagonist) has been dead for the last three years. Thandie Jones continues to survive and has links to 'Ark Two', which turns out to be a (new) and expansive seafloor settlement
Underwater habitat
Underwater habitats are underwater structures in which people can live for extended periods and carry out most of the basic human functions of a 24-hour day, such as working, resting, eating, attending to personal hygiene, and sleeping...
which taps the geothermal
Geothermal
Geothermal is related to energy and may refer to:* The geothermal gradient and associated heat flows from within the Earth- Renewable technology :...
energy from the submerged former Yellowstone National Park's supercaldera
Yellowstone Caldera
The Yellowstone Caldera is the volcanic caldera located in Yellowstone National Park in the United States, sometimes referred to as the Yellowstone Supervolcano. The caldera is located in the northwest corner of Wyoming, in which the vast majority of the park is contained. The major features of...
. Kelly meets her aged father, Edward Kenzie, and her estranged son Dexter, whom she voluntarily abandoned for a place on board. Mel has also survived, but Gordo Alonzo died defending Ark Two from ID interlopers before the rising floodwaters made further interference impossible. Human genetic engineering is postulated to assist the descendants of Ark Two to adapt to their new and arduous and environmental conditions. This idea ("pantropy
Pantropy
Pantropy is a hypothetical process of space colonization in which rather than terraforming other planets or building space habitats suitable for human habitation, humans are modified to be able to thrive in the existing environment...
"), used by James Blish
James Blish
James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.-Biography:...
in his story suite The Seedling Stars
The Seedling Stars
The Seedling Stars is a 1957 collection of science fiction short stories by James Blish. It was first published by Gnome Press in 1957 in an edition of 5,000 copies...
, is a powerful theme in almost all of Baxter's fictional series.
Two years before Halivah arrives at Earth III, Venus intercepted a strong, brief signal of unknown origin and was not repeated (similar to the Wow! signal
Wow! signal
The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of The Ohio State University then located at Ohio Wesleyan University's Perkins Observatory, Delaware, Ohio. The signal bore...
), and it is speculated to be extraterrestrial. She keeps the knowledge of the signal to herself.
In 2081, the ship arrives at Earth III which turns out to be in a close proximity to its parent star, its surface is active with volcanoes and its climate frigidly cold from the weak solar heating of the red dwarf along with one side permanently facing away from the star
Tidal locking
Tidal locking occurs when the gravitational gradient makes one side of an astronomical body always face another; for example, the same side of the Earth's Moon always faces the Earth. A tidally locked body takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner...
, but the planet is nonetheless habitable enough to support photosynthetic
Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis is a chemical process that converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially sugars, using the energy from sunlight. Photosynthesis occurs in plants, algae, and many species of bacteria, but not in archaea. Photosynthetic organisms are called photoautotrophs, since they can...
life and by extension, human life. With only one landing craft left after the mutiny years earlier, Holle is forced to halve the crew through a careful selection of those to colonize the planet, specifically young children who are as diverse as possible to eliminate the risk of inbreeding. Wilson is selected to go for he is the only one who could fly the shuttle despite his age, and finally Helen is selected to go to educate the young colonists for the process of building a functional colony to prosper. After a painful goodbye to her mother Grace, and to her own children, Helen and the settlers disembark. However, Holle and Venus resolve to explore the star system's other planets using small warp-jumps. The novel is left open-ended: Wilson, Helen, and the forty children on board the shuttle craft successfully land on Earth III, set foot on its surface and begin planning for rebuilding human civilization while they see the Ark for the last time before it disappears into the cosmos, suggesting that the starship has effectively become a generation ship
Generation ship
A generation ship is a hypothetical type of interstellar ark starship that travels across great distances between stars at a speed much slower than the speed of light...
until the rebuilt civilization of Earth III, that may not rise for decades, centuries, or even millennia to become spaceflight capable, can reunite with the descendants of the Ark.
Two pendant stories have been published since in Asimov's Science Fiction
Asimov's Science Fiction
Asimov's Science Fiction is an American science fiction magazine which publishes science fiction and fantasy and perpetuates the name of author and biochemist Isaac Asimov...
: "Earth II" and "Earth III"; each deals with characters struggling with the legacy of Ark One's colonization of their world in the face of military consolidation of the planets. As of April 2010, it is unclear whether there will be further continuance of the stories.
Hard Science Background
In an appendix, Baxter describes his "hard science" basis for what is depicted in Ark. His grounding includes references to source articles for generation shipGeneration ship
A generation ship is a hypothetical type of interstellar ark starship that travels across great distances between stars at a speed much slower than the speed of light...
s, interstellar Alcubierre
Alcubierre drive
The Alcubierre drive, also known as the Alcubierre metric, is a speculative, but valid solution of the Einstein field equations. It is a mathematical model of a spacetime exhibiting features reminiscent of the fictional "warp drive" from Star Trek, which can travel "faster than light", although...
warp drive vessels, Project Orion
Project Orion
Project Orion may refer to:*Project Orion was an engineering design study of spacecraft powered by nuclear pulse propulsion...
and exosolar planets. The references can be found on pp. 456–457.
Critical reception
Writing in the GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Eric Brown gave the novel a very positive review, concluding that “Never has Baxter presented a more thrilling and moving glimpse of a possible future: Ark could well be his masterpiece.” In The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, Lisa Tuttle
Lisa Tuttle
Lisa Tuttle is an American-born science fiction, fantasy, and horror author. She has published over a dozen novels, five short story collections, and several non-fiction titles, including a reference book on feminism. She has also edited several anthologies and reviewed books for various...
also wrote approvingly, calling Ark “a grim but exciting tale of the ultimate in pioneering adventure, in the most unforgiving environment of all.”
See also
- Doomsday eventDoomsday eventA doomsday event is a specific, plausibly verifiable or hypothetical occurrence which has an exceptionally destructive effect on the human race...
- Exosolar planets
- Flood (Baxter novel)Flood (Baxter novel)Published in 2008, Flood is the work of hard science fiction by English author Stephen Baxter. It describes a near future world where deep submarine seismic activity leads to seabed fragmentation, and the opening of deep subterranean reservoirs of water. Human civilization is almost destroyed by...
- Red dwarfRed dwarfAccording to the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a red dwarf star is a small and relatively cool star, of the main sequence, either late K or M spectral type....
s - Faster than light
- 82 Eridani82 Eridani82 G. Eridani is a star about 20 light years away from Earth. It is in the constellation Eridanus. It is a main sequence star of spectral type G5.-Observation:...
- Lepus (constellation)Lepus (constellation)Lepus is a constellation lying just south of the celestial equator, immediately south of Orion. Its name is Latin for hare. Although the hare does not represent any particular figure in Greek mythology, Lepus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it...