Helliconia
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| Author | Brian W. Aldiss |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science Fiction |
| Publisher | 1982; 1983; 1985 |
| Released | |
| Media Type | Print () |
| ISBN | ISBN |
The Helliconia Trilogy is a series of science fiction books by Brian Aldiss, set on the Earth-like planet Helliconia. It is an epic chronicling the rise and fall of a civilization over more than a thousand years as the planet progresses through its incredibly long seasons, which last for centuries.
The trilogy consists of the books Helliconia Spring (published 1982), Helliconia Summer (1983) and Helliconia Winter (1985).
Contents |
[edit] Synopsis
The central character is not any person but the planet itself and its science, particularly in the light of James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. The books describe realistic and credible details of the planet from the perspectives of a great variety of fields of study - astronomy, geology, climatology, geobiology, microbiology, religion, society, and many others - for which Aldiss gained the help of many Oxford academics. Connections are drawn which show numerous ways in which these aspects of life affect each other.
The books are set in the real universe, some six thousand years in the future. A space station from Earth, the Avernus, is orbiting Helliconia and closely observing the planet, including the activities of its intelligent inhabitants. The temptation to interfere in Helliconian affairs is a recurring dilemma for the inhabitants of Avernus.
Helliconia has a very long year, equivalent to some 2500 Earth years, and global temperatures vary greatly over the year. A major theme of the trilogy is the fragility of human civilization in the context of environmental changes, and the ability of humanity to preserve and recreate civilization.
Helliconia is populated by two intelligent races, humans and phagors. The humans are actually not the same species as Earth humans but a species that is remarkably similar. This can be regarded as a combination of coincidence, convergent evolution, and artistic licence.
[edit] Earth
Since the present day, the humans of Earth have been through an era of space exploration. This proved to be largely disappointing: faster than light travel was impossible, and few planets were found with life beyond the microbial. The one great success was the discovery of Helliconia. The Avernus was dispatched to monitor but not interfere with Helliconia, providing the Earth with scientific data and the entertainment of an epic reality show.
Somewhat later, the human race destroyed itself and most other life on Earth with a nuclear war. After a thousand years or so, the Earth's Gaian repair mechanisms repopulated the world with new life, including a small number of humans, who now live a simple nomadic life and have no interest in technology. This pastoral Eden seems to be Aldiss's view of how humanity should live in the world.
[edit] The Avernus
The massive space station Avernus is visible from the surface of Helliconia as a bright, fast-moving star. There are thousands of probes and other monitoring devices down on the planet, providing scientific readings, video pictures, etc., which Avernus collects and transmits on to Earth.
Six thousand people, the descendants of the original crew, live on the Avernus in a small but comfortable high-technology environment. They are enlightened and scientific and their lives are entertaining, but they are isolated from both Earth and Helliconia and they yearn to live on a real world.
After the nuclear war, transmissions from Earth suddenly stop for no reason apparent to the residents of Avernus. Avernus continues with its work for many centuries but eventually its isolated people descend into madness and sexual perversion (a common theme in Aldiss's works, which he treats with revulsion rather than salaciousness). At the end of the trilogy, Avernus is a lifeless, empty shell.
[edit] Helliconia
[edit] Astronomy
Helliconia lies in a loose binary star system, which consists of a yellow-orange dwarf similar to our sun, Batalix, and a hotter and brighter white star, Freyr. Helliconia orbits Batalix, which in turn orbits Freyr. The Batalix-Freyr system is supposedly in the constellation of Ophiuchus, about a thousand light years from Earth.
Helliconia orbits Batalix in 480 Earth days, which is called the "small year". Helliconia's orbit around Freyr, the "great year", is highly elliptical and takes approximately 1,800 small years (2,500 Earth years). While seasonal changes in the small year are slighter than those of Earth, the long seasons of the great year are much more marked. When distant from Freyr, Batalix's illumination is sufficient only to maintain ice age conditions. However, Freyr's output is many times greater than Batalix's, so as Helliconia approaches Freyr, the tropics of Helliconia become hotter even than the tropics of Earth.
Previously Helliconia only orbited Batalix, but the Helliconia-Batalix system was captured by Freyr's gravitational pull about five million years ago (i.e., very recently by astronomical and evolutionary standards).
[edit] Geography
Helliconia is somewhat larger than Earth but has a smaller axial tilt. This means that small year seasons are mild but the planet has huge polar ice caps, capable of surviving even the great summer, and the human-habitable surface area is comparable to that of Earth.
There are three continents, a tropical continent, a northern continent (Sibornal) and a southern continent. "Helliconia Spring" and "Helliconia Summer" mainly take place in the tropical continent, with its rich vitality, and "Helliconia Winter" focuses on Sibornal, where the harsher environment encourages technological progress. The southern continent does not feature in the books, except in that a tropical peninsula is mentioned as the Cradle of Humanity.
[edit] Biology
The trilogy describes a variety of imagined plants and animals, and how they cope with the extremes of the climate. The most memorable is the Wutra's Worm, an immense creature whose life span matches the great year, the Helliconia equivalent of a dragon. In the summer the young worms fly in the air, and in the winter the now-wingless mature worms live in a great network of tunnels beneath the surface.
[edit] The Phagors
Phagors are white-furred humanoid beings, roughly the size of humans but with vaguely cow-like features. They are intelligent, with their own languages and cultures, but their civilization has never advanced beyond a hunter-gatherer level.
Phagors were the dominant race on Helliconia before the Helliconia-Batalix system was captured by Freyr. As a result of the changes caused by the new sun, the humans rapidly evolved from ape-like creatures to rival the phagors for dominance. Because the humans emerged after the capture by Freyr, the phagors call them "Sons of Freyr". Humans and phagors have since been in conflict worldwide, with the phagors dominant in the great winter and the humans dominant in the great summer. The slow swings in fortune between the two races are dominated by the climate and biology, rendering military conflicts between the races essentially irrelevant.
[edit] The Humans
At the time of the trilogy, the humans have developed levels of civilization comparable at their most advanced to renaissance Europe. However, each time the thousand-year great winter returns, human civilization inevitably regresses and has to be rebuilt again the next spring. (Similar if less regular patterns of advance and regression can be observed in Earth history.) The books hint that humans in some regions are becoming more competent at preserving knowledge and social structures through the winter, and that in the next few great years they may develop a scientific-industrial civilization capable of surviving throughout the great year and thus completely dominating Helliconia.
[edit] Bone Fever and Fat Death
Bone Fever is a human disease characterised by an extreme form of anorexia, an epidemic of which sweeps the world early in the great spring. Fat Death is a disease characterised by an extreme form of bulimia, an epidemic of which sweeps the world late in the great autumn.
The two diseases are extremely unpleasant and have very high mortality rates. However, the survivors are left with bodies which are respectively much thinner or fatter and altered in other ways, and are much better adapted to the conditions of, respectively, summer or winter. In evolutionary terms, this is a huge advantage for the humans.
The two diseases are caused by the same virus, triggered by seasonal changes in the environment. The humans have a symbiotic relationship with the virus and (unknowingly) with the phagors, who carry the virus.
[edit] Human Culture
The most persistent cultural practice is "Pauk", a sort of shamanistic trance in which the practitioners believe themselves to be talking with their dead ancestors, presumably in the sub-conscious. In the great spring, when life is getting easier, the dead are angry and reproachful. In the great autumn, when life is getting harder, the dead are gentle and reassuring.
The primary god of the culture described in the books is "Wutra", who is clearly an anthropomorphised phagor.
[edit] Storylines and Characters
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[edit] Synopsis of Helliconia Spring
Late winter. Phagors are dominant. Humans live in primitive tribes and harshly governed cave cities. A small party escapes from a theocratic city and emerges on the surface, where the climate is now mild enough for them to survive and found a settlement. Spring breaks and everybody gets Bone Fever. The settlement's head start with the superior culture that the original party brought enables it to grow rapidly in size and power as human civilization reappears on the surface.
[edit] Synopsis of Helliconia Summer
High summer. The settlement is now the capital city of a great empire. Meanwhile, the residents of Avernus are holding occasional lotteries to ameliorate their ennui, the winners being allowed to go down to the planet and experience real life. They soon contract Bone Fever/Fat Death and die, but it is a great adventure and there are many volunteers. One winner, Billy Xiao Pin, gets involved in high politics, with messy consequences.
[edit] Synopsis of Helliconia Winter
Late autumn. The focus is on the politics of Sibornal and a globe-spanning chase, during which everybody gets Fat Death. The protagonist takes refuge in the Wheel of Sibornal, an extraordinary revolving monastery/prison in a ring-shaped tunnel with a single exit. The Wheel is above the Arctic Circle of Helliconia, and the protagonist emerges just in time to see Freyr set for the beginning of a centuries-long polar night.
[edit] The Helliconia Trilogy and Public Attitudes
The mid-80s, when the trilogy appeared, saw the second wave of Green politics in Europe. The ideas presented in the trilogy are closely related to modern scientific thinking and (especially in aspects of the Gaia hypothesis) "Green" thinking. Many of these ideas have since been incorporated into popular attitudes.
[edit] Criticisms of the Trilogy
This is an immensely ambitious work, effectively the entire story of a world, and at well over a thousand pages in total, it makes great demands on the reader. The books switch back and forth between character stories and scientific exposition, causing problems for readers who find the science uninteresting. There are many characters, whose stories, being subject to the whims of a realistic environment and luck, often do not follow conventional story arcs. The storylines are often complicated or slow, making reading hard work.
The occasional apparent mysticalism of the Gaianism jars somewhat with the otherwise materialistic perspective of the books.
Readers who approach the books expecting them to be like other planet-story science fiction works, such as Frank Herbert's Dune series, are likely to be disappointed, as this is a different kind of story.
[edit] References
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[edit] External Links
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