Helliconia

by Brian Aldiss

In one sense, the central character is not any person (though some families are focused on, such as Yuli the Priest's line, which dominates Helliconia Spring) but the planet itself and its science, particularly in the light of James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. The books describe realistic and credible details of the planet from the perspectives of a great variety of fields of study – astronomy, geology, climatology, geobiology, microbiology, religion, society, and many others – for which Aldiss gained the help of many Oxford academics. Connections are drawn which show numerous ways in which these aspects of life affect each other.

The books are set some six thousand years in the future. A space station from Earth, the Avernus, is orbiting Helliconia and closely observing the planet, including the activities of its intelligent inhabitants. The temptation to interfere in Helliconian affairs is a recurring dilemma for the inhabitants of Avernus.

Helliconia has a very long year (called the "great year"), equivalent to some 2500 Earth years, and global temperatures vary greatly over this period. A major theme of the trilogy is the fragility of human civilisation in the context of environmental changes, and the ability of humanity to preserve and recreate civilisation. Phenomena related to the changing of the seasons of the Great Year provide a deus ex machina plot device in the climax of each of the three books (the exploding trees at the end of Spring which allow the heroes to escape a phagor attack, the migrating fish at the end of Summer which allow the heroes to escape from an invading army, and the marauding phagors at the end of Winter which allow Luterin to escape from his captors).

Helliconia is populated by two intelligent races, humans and phagors. Helliconian humans are not the same species as Earth humans, having evolved entirely independently, but are remarkably similar in appearance, intellect, behaviour, and culture.