Brian Aldiss: Helliconia

The wind took the sound and smothered it in the weight of falling snow.

For the nature of the world as a whole is altered by age. Everything must pass through successive phases. Nothing remains for ever what it was. Everything is on the move. Everything is transformed by nature and forced into new paths. One thing, withered by time, decays and dwindles. Another emerges from ignominy, and waxes strong. So the nature of the world as a whole is altered by age. The Earth passes through successive phases, so that it can no longer bear what it could, and it can now what it could not before.

My dear Clive,

There you have it. Seven years have passed since I began to consider these matters. This volume will achieve first publication in a year when we both reach a new decade, and when my age will be exactly double yours.

As I walk in Hilary’s garden wondering what form of words to use, it occurs to me that the question to ask is, Why do individuals of the human race long for close community with each other, and yet remain so often apart? Could it be that the isolating factor is similar to that which makes us feel, as a species, apart from the rest of nature? Perhaps the Earth mother you meet in these pages has proved less than perfect. Like a real mother, she has had her troubles — on a cosmic scale.

So the fault is not all ours, or hers. We must accept a lack of perfection in the scheme of things, accept the yellow-striped fly. Time, in which the whole drama is staged, is as J. T. Fraser puts it, ‘a hierarchy of unresolved conflicts’. We must accept that limitation with the equanimity of Lucretius, and be angry only at those things against which one can be effectively angry, like the madness of making and deploying nuclear weapons.

Such matters are not generally the subject of literature. But I felt the necessity, as you see, to have a shot at incorporating them.

Now at last I have done. The rambling edifice of Helliconia is before you, with my hopes that you will enjoy the results.

Star A (later known as Freyr) once had a companion star (Star C).

Eight million years before the narrated events, Star B (later known as Batalix) came within the gravitational field of Star A. In the orbital disturbances which followed, Star C escaped entirely, while Star B was captured. Henceforth, it formed the inferior partner of a binary system. The properties of the binary suns are as follows:

Star A is between 10 and 11 million years old. It has evolved away from the main sequence and is already entering old age.

At the time of its capture of Star B, it was less luminous but hotter. So for the first million years or so after capture, the planets of Star B were subjected to far more UV radiation than at present. X-ray and UV radiation resulted in accelerated evolution of present species.

Star A evolved no planetary system. Orbiting stellar debris was drawn into it and consumed.

Star B has four planets in orbit. They are, working from inner to outer, Copaise, Aganip, HELLICONIA, and Ipocrene.

In the period before Star B’s capture, a moon was in orbit about Helliconia which was lost during the disruption of capture.

Ashows the solar system of Star B (Batalix) and its four planets coming close to a binary system consisting of a large A-type supergiant star, Star A (Freyr), and its companion, the G-type star, Star C. Disturbance begins.

Bshows resulting gravitational disruptions, causing Star C to ‘escape’, as the Star B system is drawn into Star A’s influence. The moon of one of the planets of Star B (Helliconia) is lost to the system, drifting away in the general direction of Star C.

Cshows that now a new binary system has been formed. Star B and its attendant planets are in orbit about the supergiant Star A.

As located from Earth, the binary system of stars A and B lies in the constellation Ophiuchus (The Serpent-Bearer). The main body of a dark dust cloud lies close to the neighbouring constellation of Scorpius, at a distance of 700 light years from Earth. It conceals a cluster of comparatively young stars, with Star A among them.

Star A is just north of Antares. Location: Right Ascension 16h 25m. Declination: — 24° 30 ′.

Helliconia’s first designation on terrestrial charts: Planet G4 PBX / 4582–4–3.

Helliconia is a planet with roughly terrestrial properties.

Axial inclination of rotation axis to the plane of orbit 55°

This compares with about 66° for Earth.

This widens the range of temperatures within climatic zones.

The atmospheric composition varied slightly from pre-capture to post-capture. A greater amount of carbon dioxide in the air, pre-capture, produced a mean temperature of — 7°C. After capture, and at periastron (when Star B and planets are at their closest to Star A), some of this atmospheric CO combined with water to form carbonate rocks.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is thus reduced, so too the benefit of a ‘greenhouse’ effect is reduced, yielding a mean temperature of + 10°C.

In other words, pre-capture conditions were better than might be expected, while post-capture conditions are more severe.

Helliconia’s ‘Small Year’, that is to say its annual orbit about its parent Star B, is equal to 1.42 Earth years.

The motions of stars A and B are such that B orbits A in the equivalent of 2592 Earth years. Star B, in accordance with Kepler’s laws, moves in its orbit at a varying speed, slowing as it reaches the most distant point (apastron) from Star A, speeding up when it nears Star A (at periastron). In consequence, its planets, Helliconia included, spend less time enjoying maximum energy than they do receiving minimum energy.

Fig. 2 shows the ‘Great Year’ of Helliconia about the giant primary, where t = time in Earth years from apastron.

It is the Great Year which has predominant influence over Helliconia’s climate, and Star A which provides most of Helliconia’s heat and energy.

The x to x sector marks the 500 E years of deepest winter on either side of apastron.