![]() ![]() It begins with all of them living in the same small area, ear-marked generations before by the couple left behind when a trio of their ill-fated party made an effort to return home for help. In the midst of Chris Beckett’s Dark Eden, however, I found myself asking whether, surely, some revelation might not be at hand.ĭark Eden is the story of just over 500 humans marooned on an alien planet following the disastrous first flight of an interstellar craft from Earth. ![]() Likewise, I’ve wondered if one of this year’s shortlisted works, 2312, isn’t also indicative of this collective slouching towards Bethlehem, this perpetual deferral of the next coming. The words of Alexander Herzen were one of the ways in which I characterised last year’s Clarke Award shortlist: a selection of books aware of our contemporary malaise, but unsure what to put in its place, or indeed how to do so. Between the death of one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by a long night of chaos and desolation will pass. ![]() ![]() Yet what is frightening is that the departing world leaves behind it not an heir but a pregnant widow. The death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul. ![]()
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