In the Ocean of Night
Encyclopedia
In the Ocean of Night is a 1977
hard science fiction
novel
by Gregory Benford
. It is the first novel in his Galactic Center Saga
. It was nominated for the Nebula Award
for Best Novel
in 1977, and for the Locus Award the following year.
In the Ocean of Night was first published as a novelette
in the May/June 1972 edition of Worlds of If Science Fiction
.
, sent to attach a thermonuclear bomb to an asteroid or comet named Icarus
which is on a direct collision course for India
- only if it is a rocky asteroid and not a slush ice core style comet.
Icarus turns out to be large, solid, and made of a nickel-iron composite. Nigel is instructed to plant the 50 megaton weapon and leave (so it can be detonated). He persuades Mission Control to let him put it in a large fissure he discovered, so it would be even more effective. They let him.
In the fissure, Nigel discovers strips of metal worked in obviously artificial patterns. Awestruck at this evidence of extraterrestrial intelligent life, Nigel begins exploring. Icarus is made up of a number of hollow shells, making the asteroid's mass far less than predicted. Presumably this makes Icarus less dangerous, allowing Nigel to spend time exploring this historic artifact. However, NASA claims that the demolition has to go forward, that Icarus would somehow skip off the atmosphere and land in the Indian Ocean
and cause even more damage through the resultant tsunami. This of course is an obvious lie, and Nigel convinces his partner of that. They hide the nuke and spend the next week retrieving artifacts and materials before they finally set the nuclear bomb off and turn Icarus into rubble.
15 years after their discovery the Icarus artifacts have yielded little, and Nigel's delayed detonation of Icarus has distanced him from NASA and other people. Nigel's partner, Alexandria, has developed systemic lupus erythematosus
, an oft-fatal disease caused by pollution. An anomaly over by Jupiter distracts Nigel: something is repeating radio broadcasts. Alexandria is distracted by the mechanics of selling American Airlines
to some Brazilians.
The anomaly fires its fusion engines and reveals itself to the satellites around Jupiter. As a probe vessel, the directing computer could not afford to ignore the satellites' radio emissions before it moved on to Earth.
Eventually the JPL team locates it around Venus. Nigel arranges to hijack the communications, transmitting his own signal (a binary sequence of prime number
s relating the Snark's trajectory). The Snark receives the signal as a sign of non-hostile intentions and transmits back. It also reaches out through Nigel's medical implants to his dead partner's more elaborate ones, and commandeers her body to explore and learn about Earth. Thus the initial tentative transmissions blossom into a largely one-way torrent of information for the Snark. One day, it asks to visit Earth. A compromise is worked out: the Snark will orbit the Moon until trust is built up. As Nigel is already fully informed, and everything about the Snark is being kept a state secret, he is assigned to pilot the space ship meeting the Snark - which will be armed with another nuclear weapon.
Nigel meets the Snark; he is under orders to attack it. The Snark disables the chemical weapons and begins talking to Nigel. It says that organic civilizations and species are inherently unstable; they flash brilliantly and commit suicide sooner or later. The autonomous machines they craft live on long after them, going on and evolving. But they cannot truly compete with the organics, who live "in the universe of essences". That is the reason for the Great Silence
.
Nigel's superiors order him to use the nuclear weapon. He refuses. They override him and fire it anyway, knowing that its detonation will inevitably kill Nigel. If it hit the Snark, it would be badly disabled, so it flees the Solar System faster than the missile can follow.
The decision to fire is covered up, and the version of the Snark's visit fed to the public markedly different from what Nigel actually experienced. Nigel blackmails NASA into letting him go to the projects on the Moon; the Snark had directed a transmission at the Mare Marginis
for unknown parties, and Nigel wanted to find those parties.
Four years later, in 2018 (2038), Nigel is now based on the Moon. A fellow astronaut, Nikka, is involved in a crash that accidentally discovers a still active alien spacecraft wreck in the Moon
's Mare Marginis
- a spacecraft suspiciously armed with a once-powerful anti-spacecraft weapon. Nigel and Nikka become lovers during the course of exploring the wreck, which proves to have a functioning computer with a direct neural interface. Nigel, and several others, experiment with the computer's neural hook-up, and leave fundamentally changed by it - the computer becomes inert and unable to reveal anymore about its creators. Meanwhile, on Earth, some surprising experiments in human genetics conducted by the aliens are discovered alive in North America.
1977 in literature
The year 1977 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Douglas Adams begins writing for BBC radio.*V. S. Naipaul declines the offer of a CBE....
hard science fiction
Hard science fiction
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Gregory Benford
Gregory Benford
Gregory Benford is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine...
. It is the first novel in his Galactic Center Saga
Galactic Center Saga
The Galactic Center Saga is a series of books by author Gregory Benford detailing a galactic war between mechanical and biological life.* In the Ocean of Night -- 1977 Nebula Award nominee, 1978 Locus Award nominee...
. It was nominated for the Nebula Award
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
for Best Novel
Nebula Award for Best Novel
Winners of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The stated year is that of publication; awards are given in the following year.- Winners and other nominees :...
in 1977, and for the Locus Award the following year.
In the Ocean of Night was first published as a novelette
Novelette
A novelette is a piece of short prose fiction. The distinction between a novelette and other literary forms is usually based upon word count, with a novelette being longer than a short story, but shorter than a novella...
in the May/June 1972 edition of Worlds of If Science Fiction
If (magazine)
If was an American science fiction magazine launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, owned by James L. Quinn. Quinn hired Paul W. Fairman to be the first editor, but early circulation figures were disappointing, and Quinn fired Fairman after only three issues. Quinn then took over the...
.
Plot summary
The beginning of the novel, set in 1999 (2019 in the second edition), finds Nigel Walmsley, a British scientist and astronaut for NASANASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
, sent to attach a thermonuclear bomb to an asteroid or comet named Icarus
1566 Icarus
1566 Icarus is an Apollo asteroid that at perihelion comes closer to the Sun than Mercury, i.e. it is a Mercury-crossing asteroid. It is also a Venus and Mars-crosser. It is named after Icarus of Greek mythology, who flew too close to the Sun...
which is on a direct collision course for India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
- only if it is a rocky asteroid and not a slush ice core style comet.
Icarus turns out to be large, solid, and made of a nickel-iron composite. Nigel is instructed to plant the 50 megaton weapon and leave (so it can be detonated). He persuades Mission Control to let him put it in a large fissure he discovered, so it would be even more effective. They let him.
In the fissure, Nigel discovers strips of metal worked in obviously artificial patterns. Awestruck at this evidence of extraterrestrial intelligent life, Nigel begins exploring. Icarus is made up of a number of hollow shells, making the asteroid's mass far less than predicted. Presumably this makes Icarus less dangerous, allowing Nigel to spend time exploring this historic artifact. However, NASA claims that the demolition has to go forward, that Icarus would somehow skip off the atmosphere and land in the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
and cause even more damage through the resultant tsunami. This of course is an obvious lie, and Nigel convinces his partner of that. They hide the nuke and spend the next week retrieving artifacts and materials before they finally set the nuclear bomb off and turn Icarus into rubble.
15 years after their discovery the Icarus artifacts have yielded little, and Nigel's delayed detonation of Icarus has distanced him from NASA and other people. Nigel's partner, Alexandria, has developed systemic lupus erythematosus
Systemic lupus erythematosus
Systemic lupus erythematosus , often abbreviated to SLE or lupus, is a systemic autoimmune disease that can affect any part of the body. As occurs in other autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks the body's cells and tissue, resulting in inflammation and tissue damage...
, an oft-fatal disease caused by pollution. An anomaly over by Jupiter distracts Nigel: something is repeating radio broadcasts. Alexandria is distracted by the mechanics of selling American Airlines
American Airlines
American Airlines, Inc. is the world's fourth-largest airline in passenger miles transported and operating revenues. American Airlines is a subsidiary of the AMR Corporation and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas adjacent to its largest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport...
to some Brazilians.
The anomaly fires its fusion engines and reveals itself to the satellites around Jupiter. As a probe vessel, the directing computer could not afford to ignore the satellites' radio emissions before it moved on to Earth.
Eventually the JPL team locates it around Venus. Nigel arranges to hijack the communications, transmitting his own signal (a binary sequence of prime number
Prime number
A prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. A natural number greater than 1 that is not a prime number is called a composite number. For example 5 is prime, as only 1 and 5 divide it, whereas 6 is composite, since it has the divisors 2...
s relating the Snark's trajectory). The Snark receives the signal as a sign of non-hostile intentions and transmits back. It also reaches out through Nigel's medical implants to his dead partner's more elaborate ones, and commandeers her body to explore and learn about Earth. Thus the initial tentative transmissions blossom into a largely one-way torrent of information for the Snark. One day, it asks to visit Earth. A compromise is worked out: the Snark will orbit the Moon until trust is built up. As Nigel is already fully informed, and everything about the Snark is being kept a state secret, he is assigned to pilot the space ship meeting the Snark - which will be armed with another nuclear weapon.
Nigel meets the Snark; he is under orders to attack it. The Snark disables the chemical weapons and begins talking to Nigel. It says that organic civilizations and species are inherently unstable; they flash brilliantly and commit suicide sooner or later. The autonomous machines they craft live on long after them, going on and evolving. But they cannot truly compete with the organics, who live "in the universe of essences". That is the reason for the Great Silence
Fermi paradox
The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations....
.
Nigel's superiors order him to use the nuclear weapon. He refuses. They override him and fire it anyway, knowing that its detonation will inevitably kill Nigel. If it hit the Snark, it would be badly disabled, so it flees the Solar System faster than the missile can follow.
The decision to fire is covered up, and the version of the Snark's visit fed to the public markedly different from what Nigel actually experienced. Nigel blackmails NASA into letting him go to the projects on the Moon; the Snark had directed a transmission at the Mare Marginis
Mare Marginis
Mare Marginis is a lunar mare that lies on the very edge of the lunar nearside. The selenographic coordinates of this feature are 13.3° N, 86.1° E, and the diameter is 420 km. The name is Latin for "Sea of the Edge"....
for unknown parties, and Nigel wanted to find those parties.
Four years later, in 2018 (2038), Nigel is now based on the Moon. A fellow astronaut, Nikka, is involved in a crash that accidentally discovers a still active alien spacecraft wreck in the Moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
's Mare Marginis
Mare Marginis
Mare Marginis is a lunar mare that lies on the very edge of the lunar nearside. The selenographic coordinates of this feature are 13.3° N, 86.1° E, and the diameter is 420 km. The name is Latin for "Sea of the Edge"....
- a spacecraft suspiciously armed with a once-powerful anti-spacecraft weapon. Nigel and Nikka become lovers during the course of exploring the wreck, which proves to have a functioning computer with a direct neural interface. Nigel, and several others, experiment with the computer's neural hook-up, and leave fundamentally changed by it - the computer becomes inert and unable to reveal anymore about its creators. Meanwhile, on Earth, some surprising experiments in human genetics conducted by the aliens are discovered alive in North America.
External links
- In the Ocean of Night at Worlds Without End