Epsilon Eridani in Fiction - Literature

Literature

• Dorsai! (1960, also published as The Genetic General), and other novels in the unfinished Childe Cycle by Gordon R. Dickson. Donal Graeme, warrior extraordinaire from the mercenary homeworld Dorsai, and second incarnation of the series' evolutionary superman, launches his meteoric military career with service in several police actions on the vividly drawn planets Harmony and Association lying under the small orange Epsilon Eridani sun (see graphic).
• "Conquest by Default" (1968), short story by Vernor Vinge originally published in Analog and later included in The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001). An alien civilization native to Epsilon Eridani II (the planet Miki) arrives in full force at the Solar System to place the third %wrlyg Support Fleet in a parking orbit high above the Earth, their looming presence decidedly intimidating thanks to a significant edge in technology. The Mikin culture is anarchic, acquisitive, cosmopolitan, and wildly diverse. In the story, as told by Scholar Ron Melmwn (a Mikin anthropologist who establishes tentative inter-species rapport with his human counterparts, professor Dahlmann and his daughter Mary), culture shock abounds as men and women interact with visitors who are bent on immigration, trade—and maybe exterminating the human race.
• The Napoleons of Eridanus (1976), The Emperor of Eridanus (1983), and The Eridani Colonists (1984), translations by Stanley Hochman of the French language Eridanus trilogy written by Dr. Claude Pierre Marie Avice, as by Pierre Barbet. A squadron of Napoleonic soldiers is kidnapped by aliens and hustled off to the Epsilon Eridani system, whence they unaccountably conquer a space empire.
• Downbelow Station (1981) and other Alliance-Union universe works, novels by C.J. Cherryh. Epsilon Eridani is the site of Viking Station, one of the stations on the "Great Circle" chain of space stations that terminates at Pell Station in the Tau Ceti system.
• Foundation's Edge (1982), novel by Isaac Asimov. In this transitional novel between Asimov's Robot novels and his later-set Galactic Empire novels of the Foundation series, the planet Comporellon of Epsilon Eridani (previously named BaleyWorld after Elijah Baley's son Bentley) was the first non-Spacer extraterrestrial planet settled by Earthmen, in the second wave of stellar emigration after the events that wrapped up the robot series.
• Starburst (1982), novel by Frederik Pohl. A crew of superb human specimens is sent on what they believe is mankind's first voyage to a planet in another star system. Dr. Dieter von Knefhausen knows better—for there is no planet, no place to go, and no place from which to return. In a fabrication recalling the supposedly fake NASA Moon landings of an earlier century Knefhuasen has planned it that way. However, by the end of the tale, humans really do reach the stars, as the protagonist Jeron "... the fleet of golden globes to the third planet of Epsilon Eridani."
• Eon (1985), novel by Greg Bear. The Solar System is visited by the Stone, a Big Dumb Object that appears to be an artifact sent backward in time from a future human civilization. Records left aboard by the futurians suggest that in their remote past—the Earth's present—the asteroid starship, called by them the Thistledown, was dispatched to Epsilon Eridani to found a new home for humankind following the devastation of the Earth in a nuclear holocaust, an account that causes understandable present-day consternation. However the Thistledown never fulfilled the mission, instead getting whip-snapped into an alternate universe immediately upon the activation of the Way, an endless jump street her builders somehow managed to embed within her finite confines.
• The Stones of Nomuru (1988) and The Venom Trees of Sunga (1992), novels in the Viagens Interplanetarias series written by L. Sprague de Camp, with collaboration by Catherine Crook de Camp. Kukulkan, a planet in the Epsilon Eridani system, is inhabited by an ancient civilization of intelligent reptilian creatures that has plateaued at a swords-and-steam level of technology. The "Kooks" are honest, honor-bound, and dull in personality; in both novels, the planet serves as the setting for a number of more or less conventional pre-industrial adventures.
• Starquake (1989), novel by Robert Forward. Dragon's Egg, a neutron star, has wandered into the vicinity of the Solar System and into the ken of Earth scientists. It has some "dazzling" statistics: a surface gravity 67 billion times that of the Earth, soaring mountains as high as a few inches, ruinous starquakes, and tiny intelligent inhabitants whose life processes are accelerated over ours by a factor of almost half a million. Over a period of a day, human observers inadvertently introduce the rudiments of civilization, and within a man's lifetime the "immensely enjoyable" alien cheela have lived a whole history, progressing even to interstellar exploration and leaving the secrets of FTL travel stashed in a conspicuous landmark on a planet of Epsilon Eridani—as a reward for a humanity enterprising enough to get there.
• Shivering World (1991), novel by Kathy Tyers. Dr. Graysha Brady-Phillips is suffering from a genetic disease that causes early death. When she is offered a position on the newly terraformed Goddard, a refuge from the ecological ruin of the Earth where the average life span exceeds 150 years, she leaps at the chance; the colonists' radical—and illegal—science just might be her only hope for a cure. The world Goddard is accompanied in Epsilon Eridani orbit by the older artificial habitat Copernicus, ensconced in one of the planet's stable LaGrange points. But whole planets are better: "On broader worlds like this—he squinted towards the red sun his people had once called Eps Eridani—a wiser humanity might start again..."
• Worldwar (1994-1996), tetralogy of novels written by Harry Turtledove. In this revised history, an Earth in the throes of World War II is invaded by a fleet of starships assembled for the purpose by The Race. Only three times in its 50,000-year history has this expansionist species of reptilian aliens organized such an armada, each time with the goal of subduing another civilization: the Rabotev (inhabitants of Epsilon Eridani), the Halessi, and now humanity. However, the invaders are in for a surprise, as their most recent intelligence on the Earth dates from the Middle Ages. Alternate world stories are a specialty of historian Turtledove, whose "thorough understanding of his source material gracefully infiltrates the fun and fantastication."
• Echoes of Honor (1998), novel in the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. The Havenite Navy launches a devastating barrage of simultaneous surprise attacks on Manticore and her allies. Lester Tourville, in command of the task force attacking Zanzibar, plans a risky maneuver to knock out its orbital installations—but if any of his missiles hit the planet, there'll be hell to pay: "... violation of the Epsilon Eridani Edict’s ban on indiscriminate planetary bombardment was the one thing guaranteed to bring the Solarian League Navy down on any star nation like a hammer." The prohibitions in the Edict stem from the Epsilon Eridani Incident, an early space war atrocity entailing the mass destruction of one of the League's oldest worlds.
• Helm (1998), novel written by Steven Gould. Agatsu (あがつ, Epsilon Eridani II) is close to Earth-normal, and the rest can be done quite efficiently by tailored terraforming bacteria. The work will be completed just as the refugee ship, carrying most of what remains of Earth's devastated population, arrives to colonize her. The ship, designed for 1000 souls, will carry 4000—at the expense of almost all her cargo. But that's ok: When the bare survival of the race is at stake, such niceties as any technology past knives, ropes, and hammers would be a sheer luxury. With much ingenuity, the colonists proceed to build a civilization from scratch.

• Factoring Humanity (1998), novel by Robert J. Sawyer. SETI astronomers detect an artificial signal from Alpha Centauri A, the harbinger of a ten-year flood of cryptic data that protagonist Heather Davis devotes her life to deciphering. She finally succeeds, and comes upon plans for a starship that could open up interstellar contact, starting with the "Centaurs." Meanwhile, a single despairing message is received from Epsilon Eridani, easier to translate but much more alarming: "It couldn’t be plainer: biological life, based on carbon, being supplanted by silicon-based artificial intelligence ..." And it turns out that the AI "overminds" of Earth and Alpha Centauri are already in contact. Is humanity on the threshold of an era of limitless exploration—or of extinction?
• Revelation Space (2000- ), and other novels, novellas, and short stories in the Revelation Space universe by Alastair Reynolds. The Epsilon Eridani system includes:
  • Yellowstone, home to the universe's most advanced human civilization, and a focal point of the series as a whole (see graphic). During the so-called Belle Epoque (ending with the nanovirus Melding Plague), Yellowstone society is centered in the Glitter Band and in Chasm City.
  • Marco's Eye, a moon of Yellowstone (see graphic).
  • Tangerine Dream, a gas giant (see above).

• Halo: The Fall of Reach (2001) and Halo: First Strike (2003), prequel novelizations to installments of the Halo series of video games, written by Eric Nylund, and meant to provide back-stories for the popular games. The first novel begins as Covenant forces attack the planet Reach and vitrify the surface, turning its landmasses into glass. In the books (and games) the Epsilon Eridani system hosts a total of six inhabited planets: Reach itself, which had been a stronghold of humanity, second only to Earth itself, Tribute, Beta Gabriel, Circumstance, Tantalus, and Epsilon Eridani IV (see Halo, below).

• Vorpal Blade (2007), novel written by John Ringo with Travis S. Taylor. William Weaver, PhD. and SEAL Chief Miller are back and Bill got himself a ship! The former SSBN Nebraska has been converted, using mostly garage mechanics and baling wire, into a warp ship ready to go "out there": the ASS Vorpal Blade. Quite by accident, the Epsilon Eridani System is her first destination.
• Implied Spaces (2008), novel written by Walter Jon Williams. It is the epoch of the technological singularity. Humanity numbers in the hundreds of billions, but only a few million remain in the solar system. Many have traveled on generation starships to establish colonies around other stars, such as Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, and Epsilon Eridani, which was a "prime candidate for settlement—a young star with planets, ... surrounded by a cold dust cloud which would have congealed into an inner system of rocky bodies..." (see graphic) However, the star is unstable, with energy levels that flare and fade unpredictably, and it undergoes a "stellar event"—not quite a nova; more like a "burp"—that is nonetheless enough to burn to a crisp every last colonist.