Nemesis (Asimov)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nemesis is a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov. One of his later science fiction novels, it was published in 1989, only three years before his death. The novel is loosely related to the future history into which he attempted to integrate his science fiction output, connecting several ideas from earlier and later novels, including non-human intelligence, sentient planets (Erythro), and rotor engines (Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain). In the context of Asimov's Foundation Universe, it is told of thousands of years later as a "legend". This was one of the books that gave the inspiration to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
The demands of the plot required Asimov to hypothesize a planetary system about a star named Nemesis. At the time of the writing, the name Nemesis was given to a theoretical companion to Earth's sun which could provide a mechanism for periodic disturbances of comets in the Oort cloud, which would then fall inwards causing mass extinctions. The red dwarf star in the book turns out not to be this companion; it is simply passing through the solar system.
The novel is set in an era in which interstellar travel is in the process of being discovered and perfected. Before the novel's opening a "hyper-skipping" mode that allows travel at exactly light speed is used to move a reclusive asteroid colony from the vicinity of Earth to the newly discovered red dwarf, Nemesis. There, it takes up orbit around the semi-habitable planet Erythro, named for the red light that falls on it. While the colonists argue over the direction of future colonization -- down to Erythro, or up to the asteroid belts of Nemesis system -- events catch up to them. Back on Earth a more advanced hyperjump method of travel is perfected, ending the Erythro colony's isolation and opening the galaxy to human exploration. The story also relates the breakup and reunion of a family (the mother, the discoverer of Nemesis, and the daughter were separated from the Earthbound father when the colony departed; the father becomes part of the hyperjump research project as a result); the startling discovery that the bacterial inhabitants of Erythro, collectively, constitute a sentient and telepathic organism; and the discovery and resolution of a massive crisis: Nemesis' trajectory threatens to gravitationally destabilize the solar system.
Interestingly, the planetary system in the book included a Jovian planet in a very short-period orbit about its primary star. (Erythro is a moon of this planet.) This was a radical idea in 1989, but was vindicated with the discovery of the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star (that orbiting 51 Pegasi) in 1995, dubbed "Bellerophon").
| The novels of Isaac Asimov |
|---|
|
Robot Series: The Caves of Steel | The Naked Sun | The Robots of Dawn | Robots and Empire |
|
|
