Chris Beckett's Dark Eden runs on geothermal heat — SkimNews
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- Chris Beckett conceived Eden in 1992 for the short story "The Circle of Stones", before free-floating planets had been confirmed; some have since been detected using gravitational lensing.
- Dark Eden's "geothermal trees" pump hot liquid down into deep rocks and back up, melting surface ice and feeding on its nutrients until much of the surface is ice-free and carries a breathable atmosphere.
- Eden's large animals all share a six-limbed body plan, and its eyes evolved alongside bioluminescence, with luminous lanternflowers attracting the creatures that help the trees reproduce.
- Chris Beckett concedes the world runs on "fiction science": more than one astronomer has told him free-floating planets with warm surfaces cannot exist, because radiator-like trees would not sustain liquid water or a warm atmosphere.
- Firmament, a Comma Press anthology pairing writers with Jodrell Bank astronomers, includes Beckett's story with Ida Janiak about Lupus, an Earth-sized free-floating planet that arrives in the solar system with a kilometres-thick ice shell over a liquid ocean.
- Firmament appears in November, and a condensed version of Beckett and Janiak's story runs in the New Scientist Christmas edition, online 16 December and in print on the 19th.
- Dark Eden follows a small human community descended from stranded Earth visitors using stone-and-wood tools, whose circle of stones marks their ancestors' landing and represents hope of return and redemption; the Corvus novel is the November read for the New Scientist Book Club.
Why it matters: Beckett concedes that no radiator forest can keep a free-floating planet warm, so Dark Eden's conceit rests on deliberate licence rather than science. His Firmament story with Jodrell Bank astronomer Ida Janiak applies the premise more defensibly — an Earth-sized Lupus with a kilometres-thick ice shell over a liquid ocean — reaching readers in November and in New Scientist on 16 December.
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