Alpha Centauri in Fiction - Literature

Literature

• "Homo Sol" (1940), short story by Isaac Asimov. Having discovering the secret of hyperspace travel, humanity dedicates its first interstellar mission to a successful landing on a planet of Alpha Centauri. This achievement entitles Earth to membership in the pan-galactic federation of hominid civilizations—except for its independent and warlike nature. A Federation proto-psychohistorian is eventually able to work out the psychological means to convince the Solarians to accept membership in the Federation.
• Far Centaurus (1944), short story by A. E. van Vogt published in the collection Destination: Universe! (1952). A crew of Terran explorers who have been hibernating through a centuries-long voyage to Alpha Centauri discover on arrival that their technology has been radically superseded; humanity has arrived at the Alphan planet Pelham via superluminal travel long before them, and has long forgotten about them and their primitive mission (compare Comics: Guardians of the Galaxy below). The travelers must overcome their childlike naïveté to cope with the near Godlike human civilization that has evolved in their absence—a good example of the "quasimessianic ... transcendental omnipotence" with which van Vogt often furnishes his protagonists in order to generate a sense of wonder in his tales.
• Revolt on Alpha C (1955), juvenile and debut novel by Robert Silverberg. (In this case, "Alpha C" is an abbreviation of Alpha Centauri, treated as a single star, and does not refer to Proxima Centauri as the C component of the trinary system.) In the novel, when Space Patrol cadet Larry Stark visits the dinosaur planet Alpha C IV on a final training cruise before he receives his commission, its human colonists are on the verge of declaring a war of independence from Earth. Young Stark must balance his loyalty against his ideals and decide which side to support in this morally ambiguous confrontation.
• The Magellanic Cloud (1955), untranslated Polish language novel (Obłok Magellana) by Stanislaw Lem. Aboard a vessel called Gaia, 227 men and women leave the Earth for the Alpha Centauri system. After almost eight years of travel, they find signs of organic life on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, possibly coming from another planet within the Centauri system. One of the planets orbiting Alpha Centauri turns out to be inhabited by an advanced civilization.
• Childe Cycle (1959), unfinished series of novels by Gordon R. Dickson. The Alpha Centauri system has a total of 12 planets, among them Cassida in orbit around Alpha Centauri A and Newton in orbit around Alpha Centauri B. Cassida has a hard science splinter culture, known for its technicians and engineers. A poor world, it also provides mercenaries to other planetary governments. Newton also has a hard science culture. It is preeminent in science, and its physicists are without peer.
• Seed of Light (1959), novel by Edmund Cooper. An elite crew of men and women fleeing Earth after a nuclear holocaust reach the Alpha Centauri system, only to discover—to their vast chagrin—that there are no planets there. Reluctantly, they forge onward.
• Alpha Centauri or Die! (1963), novel by Leigh Brackett (fixup of The Ark of Mars (1953) and Teleportress of Alpha C (1954), originally published as an Ace Double with Legend of Lost Earth by G. McDonald Wallis). In this novel, a small group of colonists on Mars conspires to refurbish an abandoned starship hulk, with the goal of escaping from repressive Martian rule. Their destination is a habitable planet of Alpha Centauri, where they can govern themselves in imagined peace and security.
• Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964), novel by Philip K. Dick. War between Earth and the insectoid-dominated planet Alpha II ended over a decade ago. The novel's plot revolves around an attempt by Earth to reassert authority over its former colony on the habitable second moon Alpha III M2 of Alpha Centauri's giant third planet, called the "Alphane" moon from Dick's invented adjective form of Alpha Centauri, which he treats as a single star. The moon M2, once a psychiatric asylum, is inhabited by descendants of the original inmates who now populate tongue-in-cheek "Clans": Pares (paranoids), who form the statesman class; Manses (manics), who form the warrior caste; Skitzes (poets) and so on. In his novel The Blue World (1966) Jack Vance pursued a similar humorous conceit, where the castes evolved from the criminal métiers of prisoners aboard a crashed "Ship of Space": Swindlers (fishermen) who cozen fish into their nets, Bezzlers who form a priestly class, and so on.
• The Man-Kzin Wars (1966), Known Space novel by Larry Niven. Wunderland is a planet circling Alpha Centauri, and the location of the first extra-solar colony in the human history of Known Space. A salubrious world with a gravity 60% of Earth normal, it was invaded and its population enslaved for almost half a century by the Kzinti during the first Man-Kzin War. Alpha Centaurian men and women endured, or waged guerrilla warfare from remote and desolate bases, until the liberation.
• "Like Banquo's Ghost" (1968), short story by Larry Niven published in the collection The Shape of Space (1969). This ironic tale provides a twist on the more common "leapfrogged slowship" theme (compare Literature: Far Centaurus and Comics: Guardians of the Galaxy in this article). The variation goes like this: A group of elite scientists and reporters gathers to hear a radio transmission from the Snarkhunter #3 robotic space probe as it finally arrives, after a 30-year interstellar voyage, at the planet Centaura of Alpha Centauri A. Among the invited guests is the strangely enthusiastic "Butch"—who is none other than the recently arrived (via faster-than-light ship) ambassador from ... Alpha Centauri.
• The Centauri Device (1975), novel by M. John Harrison. The native Centaurians (humanoid aliens able to interbreed with humans) have been eradicated in a genocidal attack serving as an instrument of Earth's expanding colonization of the galaxy. The novel's protagonist John Truck, half-Centaurian on his mother's side, is "the last of the Centaurians," and as such the only person able to operate the "device" of the book's title: a sentient bomb which might just hold the key to settling a vicious space war. According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "... The Centauri Device is a significantly disgruntled space opera ... and one which demonstrates Harrison's persistent discomfort with the escapist conventions of this sort of science fiction. Unsurprisingly, the doomsday device of the title duly blows up the Galaxy."
• Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD (1978), a Terran Trade Authority handbook by Stewart Cowley. Alpha Centauri is the home system of the Alphans, the first alien race to associate with humanity. The Alphans become Earth's allies in a war with Proxima Centauri (the "Proximan War"). Cowley's book, a spacecraft handbook in the style of Jane's Aircraft 1977-1978 (current ed. Jane's Aircraft 2010-2011) rather than a novel, covers the events immediately before and after the Proximan War Era. It examines the 40 major types of craft operating during the period, including those of the inhabited systems of Alpha and Proxima Centauri, giving details of their development and operational history, and charts of their technical specifications.
• Downbelow Station (1981) and other Alliance-Union universe works, novels by C.J. Cherryh. Alpha Centauri is the site of Beta Station, one of the stations on the "Great Circle" chain of space stations that terminates at Pell Station in the Tau Ceti system. Beta Station was established in 2039 but mysteriously abandoned around 2160. Because it lies on no important trade routes, and apparently has no special resources of note, the system will not be recolonized for at least the next 300 years.
• Tale of Two Planets (1981), novel by Professor Morris Asimow. In this novel with a message, visitors from Alpha Centauri help to create a utopian planet Earth.
• Voyage from Yesteryear (1982), novel by James P. Hogan. An automated genetic Ark flees imminent nuclear catastrophe on the Earth, and locates a habitable planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri. Hundreds of human ova are programmed from the DNA databanks, then birthed and raised in untrammeled innocence by robotic nannies. As these "natural humans" grow to maturity, they organize the polity of their colony world Chiron as a classless pastoral anarchy. When a resurgent and covetous Earth comes calling, the Chironians "governed according to kind of Trickster Libertarianism ... effortlessly face down and flummox the attempt by Earth to re-establish control." Instead of seizing power, the invaders are happily assimilated.
• Neuromancer (1984), novel by William Gibson. The newly integrated AI Wintermute/Neuromancer has transcended Earthly concerns, and is looking for "its own kind" to talk to. It scans mountains of old records, and finds a series of transmissions recorded over a period of eight years back in the nineteen-seventies that subtly indicate the presence of a peer intelligence "in the Centauri system." The two AIs are in communication, and their search for other advanced intelligences proceeds apace.

• Footfall (1985), novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The book depicts the arrival in the Solar System of an alien species called the Fithp, man-sized "elephants" with multiple trunks, that have voyaged from Alpha Centauri in a large spacecraft driven by a Bussard ramjet. The aliens are intent on taking over the Earth, but in a particular way: Herd creatures, their traditional mode of warfare is to fight until it beomes evident which antagonist is dominant; then fighting ceases and the losers are assimilated into the winning herd. The Fithp expect their contact with humans to proceed along these lines, and are confused by human attempts at peaceful contact.
• Foundation and Earth (1986), Foundation series novel by Isaac Asimov. The marine world Alpha orbiting Alpha Centauri A (see graphic) is the final home of the last human refugees from some dying, radioactive world. The survivors, encountered here by Foundation councillor Golan Trevize, dwell in seeming Polynesian simplicity on Alpha's only land mass, a Jamaica-sized island called by them "New Earth," and the old product of a charitable terraforming project by imperial engineers under the emperor Kandar V. Could their moribund homeworld be the long-lost "Old Earth," the supposed cradle of humanity?
• The Songs of Distant Earth (1986), novel by Arthur C. Clarke. Scientists in the 1960s discover that the neutrino (ν_e) emissions from the Sun are far less than predicted by theory; it is soon confirmed that the Sun will go nova around the year 3600 CE. Humankind embarks on a massive project to send robot-tended human and other mammalian embryos to habitable worlds orbiting nearby stars. The first destination is Pasadena, a planet of Alpha Centauri A rendered nearly uninhabitable by the variable proximity of Alpha Centauri B (The first seedship left the Solar System in 2553, heading toward the Sun's near twin, Alpha Centauri A). The colony there does surprisingly well.
• Starfire (1990–2002), series of novels by David Weber and Steve White based on the Starfire board wargame (1979–1980) by Stephen V. Cole. The Alpha Centauri system plays a key role in the Terran Federation because it is the location of a large number of warp-point junctions, including one that tunnels directly into the Solar System; it is the headquarters and principal shipyard of the Terran Federation Navy. In the second novel in the series, In Death Ground, the Arachnid race discovers an unmapped warp point opening near Alpha Centauri, by means of which they mount a massive invasion of Terran space.
• Harvest of Stars (1994), novel by Poul Anderson. The planet Demeter of Alpha Centauri is marginally habitable, but the Fireball Corporation sends a colony ship full of refugees anyway. "Everybody knew that in a thousand years the planet, Demeter, would collide with another. But those thousand years could be lived in, and perhaps during them the descendants of the colonists would find a means of surviving.
• The Killing Star (1995), novel by Charles R. Pellegrino with George Zebrowski. In the late 21st century a peaceful and prosperous humanity, just mastering the technology enabling it to explore the galaxy at relativistic speeds, is blindsided by a massive, devastating attack of relativistic kill vehicles. Boulder-sized chunks of metal, with kinetic energy in the multi-megaton range, they are impossible to track and impossible to stop. Humanity is all but wiped out by this horrific bombardment, which has its origin in the Alpha Centauri AB-C system. The cephalopod Alphans explain that the attack was pre-emptive: The moment we learned to travel at relativistic speeds was the moment we had the power to do to them what they did to us first.
• Drakon (1996), Domination series novel by S. M. Stirling. The planet Samothrace in the Alpha Centauri system is a colony of Alliance refugees from the Final War on Earth between the Alliance and the Drakon Domination. Samothrace comes under renewed Drakon assault in an alternate universe that is identical to our own except in the subtlest of details (Star Wars fans should be able to tell the difference).
• Encounter with Tiber (1996), novel written by John Barnes and former astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Nine thousand years ago an alien species inhabiting the moon Tiber of a gas giant planet in the Alpha Centauri A system was facing a cosmic catastrophe; their only hope of communal survival was to explore and colonize nearby space. In the story, one of their reconnaissance vessels visited the Earth and left an encyclopedia with the collected knowledge of their race, which is discovered by humanity in the 21st century and leads to a Terran expedition to Tiber to find out who the encyclopedists were.
• The Sparrow (1996), novel by Mary Doria Russell. In 2019 the SETI program detects radio broadcasts from the planet Rakhat in the Alpha Centauri system. The Catholic Jesuit order sends an unauthorized expedition to the planet, and their incomprehension of its radical differences from human culture lead to tragedy. The protagonist and sole survivor Father Emilio Sandoz returns to Earth shattered and disfigured, and his revelations devastate the order, leaving him personally to initiate the painful process of physical and spiritual healing.
• Factoring Humanity (1998), novel by Robert J. Sawyer. SETI astronomers detect an artificial signal from Alpha Centauri A, the first inkling of a ten-year flood of cryptic data that protagonist Heather Davis devotes herself to deciphering. She finally succeeds, and discovers in the data plans for an extra-dimensional vehicle that could enable contact with the "Centaurs." Meanwhile, a single cryptic 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 collective unconscious "overminds" of Earth and Alpha Centauri are already in contact. Is humanity on the threshold of an era of limitless exploration—or of extinction?
• Centauri Dawn (2000), first novel of a trilogy by Michael Ely based on the 1999 computer game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The trilogy describes the struggles of the colonists on Chiron—a habitable world in the Alpha Centauri system, after their colony ship Unity suffers major damage and the survivors are forced to land on the planet in lifeboats. Subsequent novels in the trilogy are Dragon Sun (2001) and Twilight of the Mind (2002).
• Borrowed Tides (2001), novel by Paul Levinson. Mankind's first interstellar voyage will be to Alpha Centauri, but starship technology can only get the crew there, and not back again. There are still ample volunteers for the one-way trip, but a startling idea that just might bring them home is uncovered in the memoirs of Wise Oak, an Iroquois sachem who lived about 1500 CE on the banks of the Hudson, a tidal river that flows both ways: "The currents flow both ways not only in the Big River—the Hudson—but in the Big River to the star cluster that we call Alpha Centauri".
• Flight of The Mayflower Vol. One (2004), novel by Mark Carew and Josh Garratt. Earth is a mess, political and environmental issues are tearing the planet apart, and there doesn't seem to be much future to look forward to. A plan is devised to build a starship Ark carrying 100 colonists in suspended animation to an earthlike planet of Alpha Centauri A, but it will take 10 years to travel there. No one knows if it will work, there is no contact with Earth and no help on the way, and the colonists are on their own. They do land successfully, and the planet is hospitable—but there are complications. At this point "Volume One" ends, leaving the reader impatient for Volume 2.

• Three Body (2008), Chinese-language first novel in the Three Body Trilogy by Liu Cixin (Chinese: 劉慈欣). The three component stars of the Alpha Centauri system orbit each other in irregular and unforeseeable ways due to the complicated gravitational interactions between them, and the single planet of the combined system wanders chaotically among them. Extremophilic life managed to evolve in its wildly variable environment and rise to the level of sentience, although the trisolarian civilization has been destroyed again and again by the unpredictable movements and distances of the suns in its sky. Seeking a more benign home, the trisolarians plan a subluminal invasion of the Earth. They won't arrive soon, though. (Cixin's application of three-body dynamics to the Alpha-Centauri system is an original and intriguing idea, but it is counterfactual: The Alpha Centauri AB-C system is actually stable and predictable. Components A and B orbit one another as an ordinary binary pair of stars, unperturbed by tiny, distant C. Component C, 0.2 light years away from AB, orbits the pair as it would a remote point source of gravity.)
• Johnny Mackintosh: Star Blaze (2010), second in the series of Johnny Mackintosh novels by Keith Mansfield. There is intergalactic war. As the novel opens Toliman (it is not made clear whether this is the A or B component of the Alpha Centauri system) is forced to go supernova—the "star blaze" of the title (see graphic)—with the military objective of destroying its planetary system(s) and possibly that of the Sun as well. It is not explained how Alpha Centauri A (at 1.10 solar masses, spectral class G) or Alpha Centauri B (0.91 solar masses, spectral class K) could produce either a Type Ia supernova, which requires a white dwarf star (spectral class D), or a Type II supernova, which requires a giant star of between 9 and 40-50 solar masses.