Helliconia, page 144
Terrible though the disease is, human survival is largely dependent upon the violent weight / shape transformation which it effects. Thus, if the humans succeed in eliminating their enemies, they cause their own undoing.
Or so it seems. If the nations of Summer ceased to war among themselves, if they could then defeat the phagor legions, if they could maintain a selected number in the equivalent of zoological gardens, then humanity could break free from its present limitations. But these are large Ifs …
1 Eclipses occur in the following manner. The orbits of Helliconia and her sister planets lie at a 10° inclination to the orbit of Batalix and Freyr about each other. Helliconia’s orbit crosses the greater orbital plane at two points. Joining these two points is the line of the nodes. When the line of the nodes passes through Freyr, so that Helliconia, Batalix, and Freyr are aligned, then eclipses of the greater light will occur.
A lesser eclipse cycle occurs on the other side of periastron, lasting for 9.45 years. In accordance with Kepler’s laws, Batalix speeds up when closer to Freyr. It therefore takes less time to move from the Fat Death eclipses to the post-periastron position than from the post-periastron position to the Fat Death position in 630 E yrs AA. So the second eclipse series commences in the year 1424 E yrs AA.
APPENDIX 5
Kharnabhar
Kharnabhar is a small town in a remote region of Sibornal. The town has grown up about a remarkable monument, the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar. Previously a sacred site, it now houses criminal elements.
The fame of the Great Wheel is universal. When SartoriIrvrash arrives in Ashkitosh (Bk. 2, xi), he sees a tapestry bearing an allegorical depiction of the Wheel. ‘Upon a scarlet background, a great wheel [was] being rowed through the heavens by oarsmen in cerulean garments, each smiling blissfully, towards an astonishing maternal figure from whose mouth, nostrils, and breasts sprang the stars in the scarlet sky.’
The main and almost only route to Kharnabhar is from the port of Rivenjk, on the Climent Sea coast, northwards through the mountains of the Shivenink Chain. The distance is about 2400 miles, equivalent to a journey from Gibraltar to the north of Norway.
The Great Wheel
The Wheel is a granite ring, carved inside a granite mountain of the Chain. It revolves within Mount Kharnabhar, only one small segment being accessible from outside the mountain. The Architects long ago created the Wheel, encoding with its dimensions the external world, in a bid for astrological symmetry. ‘As Above, so below.’ The holy men who first occupied the Wheel intended it as an instrument by which to propel their world across the heavens, out of Winter and into the welcoming light and warmth of Freyr.
Originally, the Great Wheel was dedicated to God the Azoiaxic (meaning ‘something which revolves beyond life’ – later interpreted to mean ‘one who existed before life and round whom all life revolves’).
Penned within the confines of the mountain, the Wheel is inclined at 5° to the horizontal. It rotates above a floor inclined at 4°. This slight difference permits the river flowing round the base of the Wheel to carry mud beneath it, acting as lubricant.
Three-walled cells like alcoves line the outer surface of the ring. The ring is kept in slow movement, day by day. The immovable fourth wall is not part of the Wheel, although it closes off all the cells; it consists of solid unmoving rock, Mt Kharnabhar itself. Into the rock is inset lengths of chain, stapled firmly into the wall. These chains hang at 125 cm intervals.
With these chains, prisoners in the one thousand and eighty-five cells can haul themselves into and through the dark night of granite. When priests’ trumpets sound throughout, all prisoners must pull in unison on their chains. So the Wheel is shifted in its journey through rock or – as some still claim – through the heavens.
Some technical data
Wheel diameter 1825 metres (Number of Small Years in one Great Year)
thickness 13.19 m (1319 being the year of Freyr-set or Myrkwyr at latitude of Kharnabhar, counting from apastron)
height 6.60 m (12 times 55, the latitude of the Wheel)
Cell height 240 cm (= the 6 wks of 1 tenner × the 40 mins of 1 hr)
width 250 cm (+ the 10 tenners of 1 yr × the hrs in a day)
depth 480 cm (= no. of days in Small Year)
Wall thickness
between cells 0.64159 m (+ cell width gives value of pi)
Figure 6. Diagram of the Great Wheel within the granite of Mt. Kharnabhar. (Bambeck protection).
After ten years, the Wheel has been tugged by a captive back to the point at which he started his imprisonment. A revolution has been completed. On that final day, one prisoner finds daylight instead of stone for the fourth wall of his cell, and may make his exit to freedom; in the cell leading his, another man will be entering for his first day of the ten-year journey into and through the rock.
This ceaseless revolution has been seen by some to be echoed by the ceaseless orbiting of the Avernus, high above Kharnabhar.
APPENDIX 6
Populations
Helliconia is a sparsely populated world, at least as far as human and phagor densities are concerned. The following table shows how those densities fluctuate between the periods of extreme cold and heat. Phagor populations are more stable than human ones.
The weight of planetary biomass is in direct proportion to the solar energy absorbed by the planetary surface. At the time of apastron, the total mass is almost one third that at periastron.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks for invaluable preliminary discussions go to Professor Tom Shippey (philology), Dr J. M. Roberts (history) and Mr Desmond Morris (anthropology). I also wish to thank Dr B. E. Juel-Jensen (pathology) and Dr Jack Cohen (biology) for factual suggestions. Anything sound philologically is owed to Professor Tom Shippey; his lively enthusiasm has been of great help all along.
The globe of Helliconia itself was designed and built by Dr Peter Cattermole, from its geology to its weather. For the cosmology and astronomy, I am indebted to Dr Iain Nicolson, whose patience over the years is a cause for particular gratitude.
Dr Mick Kelly and Dr Norman Myers both gave up-to-date advice on winters other than natural ones. The structure of the Great Wheel owes much to Dr Joern Bambeck. James Lovelock kindly allowed me to employ his concept of Gaia in this fictional form. Herr Wolfgang Jeschke’s interest in this project from its early days has been vital.
My debt to the writings and friendship of Dr J. T. Fraser and to David Wingrove (for being protean) is apparent.
To my wife, Margaret, loving thanks for letting Helliconia take over for so long, and for working on it with me.
About the Author
Brian Aldiss was born in 1925. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Signals in Burma and Sumatra. In 1948 he was demobilised and became an assistant in an Oxford bookshop. His first published SF novel was Non-Stop, published in 1958.
By 1962 he had already won an award for his series of novellas collectively known as Hothouse, and during the 1960s he wrote some of his most famous novels: Greybeard (1964), Report on Probability A (1968) and Barefoot in the Head: A European Fantasia (1969). In addition, The Saliva Tree (1965) won the Nebula award for best novella. He continued his prolific output throughout the 1970s but achieved his greatest acclaim in the 1980s for the three massively researched novels Helliconia Spring (1982), Helliconia Summer (1983) and Helliconia Winter (1985), the first of which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
He subsequently turned his attention to straight fiction focusing on aspects of his own life (such as Forgotten Life (1988)) or autobiography (Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith’s: A Writing Life (1990) and The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998)) before returning to SF.
Throughout his writing career, Aldiss has been both an anthologist and a critic, involved in both the Penguin Science Fiction and The Year’s Best SF series. Both Billion Year Spree (1973) and its expanded follow-up Trillion Year Spree (1986) are considered classic surveys of SF. The latter won a Hugo Award in 1987.
He has also worked as a reviewer and essayist, writing for the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and the Washington Post. In 2001, his short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long was the basis for the Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
Aldiss was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2005. He currently lives in Oxford.
Also by Brian Aldiss
NOVELS
The Brightfount Diaries (1955)
Non-Stop (1958)
Bow Down to Nul (1960)
The Primal Urge (1961)
The Male Response (1961)
Hothouse (1962)
The Dark Light Years (1964)
Greybeard (1964)
Earthworks (1965)
An Age (1967)
Report on Probability A (1968)
Barefoot in the Head: A European Fantasia (1969)
The Hand-Reared Boy (1970)
A Soldier Erect (1971)
Frankenstein Unbound (1973)
The Eighty Minute Hour: A Space Opera (1974)
The Malacia Tapestry (1976)
Brothers of the Head (1977)
A Rude Awakening (1978)
Enemies of the System: A Tale of Homo Uniformis (1978)
Moreau’s Other Island (1980)
Life in the West (1980)
Helliconia Spring (1982)
Helliconia Summer (1983)
Helliconia Winter (1985)
The Year Before Yesterday (1987)
Ruins (1987)
Forgotten Life (1988)
Dracula Unbound (1991)
Remembrance Day (1993)
Somewhere East of Life (1994)
White Mars Or, The Mind Set Free (with Roger Penrose) (1999)
Super-State (2002)
The Cretan Teat (2002)
Affairs at Hampden Ferrers (2004)
Sanity and the Lady (2005)
Jocasta (2006)
HARM (2007)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Space/ Time and Nathaniel (Presciences) (1957)
No Time Like Tomorrow (1959)
The Canopy of Time (1959)
Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (1960)
The Airs of Earth (1963)
Best Science Fiction Stories of Brian W. Aldiss (1965)
The Saliva Tree and Other Strange Growths (1966)
Intangible Inc. (1969)
The Moment of Eclipse (1970)
The Book of Brian Aldiss (1972)
Last Orders and Other Stories (1977)
New Arrivals, Old Encounters (1979)
Seasons in Flight (1984)
The Magic of the Past (1987)
Best SF Stories of Brian W. Aldiss (1988)
Science Fiction Blues (1988)
A Romance of the Equator: Best Fantasy Stories (1989)
A Tupelov Too Far (1994)
The Secret of This Book (1995)
Common Clay (1996)
Super-Toys Last All Summer Long and Other Stories of Future Time (2001)
Cultural Breaks (2005)
NON FICTION
The Shape of Further Things (1970)
Billion Year Spree (1973)
Science Fiction Art (1975)
Science Fiction Art (1976)
Science Fiction as Science Fiction (1978)
The World and Nearer Ones (1979)
The Pale Shadow of Science (1985)
… And the Lurid Glare of the Comet (1986)
Trillion Year Spree (1986)
Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith’s: A Writing Life (1990)
The Detached Retina (1995)
The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998)
When the Feast is Finished (with Margaret Aldiss) (1999)
Art after Apogee: The Relationships between an Idea, a Story, a Painting (with Rosemary Phipps) (2000)
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Contents
Praise
Map
Introduction by Graham Sleight
Preface by Brian Aldiss
Helliconia Spring
Prelude: Yuli
Embruddock
Chapter I: Death of a Grandfather
Chapter II: The Past That Was Like a Dream
Chapter III: A Leap from the Tower
Chapter IV: Favourable Temperature Gradients
Chapter V: Double Sunset
Chapter VI: ‘When I Were All Befuddock …’
Chapter VII: A Cold Welcome for Phagors
Chapter VIII: In Obsidian
Chapter IX: In and Out of a Hoxney Skin
Chapter X: Laintal Ay’s Achievement
Chapter XI: When Shay Tal Went
Chapter XII: Lord of the Island
Chapter XIII: View from a Half Roon
Chapter XIV: Through the Eye of a Needle
Chapter XV: The Stench of Burning
Helliconia Summer
Chapter I: The Seacoast of Borlien
Chapter II: Some Arrivals at the Palace
Chapter III: A Premature Divorce
Chapter IV: An Innovation in the Cosgatt
Chapter V: The Way of the Madis
Chapter VI: Diplomats Bearing Gifts
Chapter VII: The Queen Visits the Living and the Dead
Chapter VIII: In the Presence of Mythology
Chapter IX: Some Botheration for the Chancellor
Chapter X: Billy Changes Custody
Chapter XI: Journey to the Northern Continent
Chapter XII: The Downstream Passenger Trade
Chapter XIII: A Way to Better Weaponry
Chapter XIV: Where Flambreg Live
Chapter XV: The Captives of the Quarry
Chapter XVI: The Man who Mined a Glacier
Chapter XVII: Death-Flight
Chapter XVIII: Visitors from the Deep
Chapter XIX: Oldorando
Chapter XX: How Justice Was Done
Chapter XXI: The Slaying of Akhanaba
Helliconia Winter
Prelude
Chapter I: The Last Battle
Chapter II: A Silent Presence
Chapter III: The Restrictions of Persons in Abodes Act
Chapter IV: An Army Career
Chapter V: A Few More Regulations
Chapter VI: G4PBX / 4582–4–3
Chapter VII: The Yellow-Striped Fly
Chapter VIII: The Rape of the Mother
Chapter IX: A Quiet Day Ashore
Chapter X: ‘The Dead Never Talk Politics’
Chapter XI: Stern Discipline for Travellers
Chapter XII: Kakool on the Trail
Chapter XIII: ‘An Old Antagonism’
Chapter XIV: The Greatest Crime
Chapter XV: Inside the Wheel
Chapter XVI: A Fatal Innocence
Chapter XVII: Sunset
Appendices
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
Appendix 5
Appendix 6
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss, Helliconia
