Cluster (novels)
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Cluster is a series of science-fiction novels by Piers Anthony. Anthony originally conceived of and wrote the series as a trilogy but later added two additional volumes.
Setting
As the series opens, humanity has colonized an area of the galaxy roughly 100 light years in diameter. This area is called Sphere Sol, as it is the sphere of influence of the race from the star Sol, that is, the sun. Sphere Sol's "neighborhood" is also home to Spheres Polaris, Canopus, Spica, Andromeda, Nath, Mizriam, and Bellatrix as well as the huge, decadent Spheres Sador and Mintaka.In the Cluster setting, races colonize other planets in three ways. First, through instantaneous teleportation, called matter transmission or mattermission. This, however, is prohibitively expensive. Second, colonists travel to new worlds in "freezer" ships, where they are cryogenically stored for the decades it takes for the voyage. Half of those frozen are lost due to failures either of the containment units or the ships themselves. Finally, most colonists arrive in lifeships, slower but safer multigenerational vessels that may take centuries to reach their destination. As the lifeships plod through space, their occupants lose more and more technical sopistication as the years pass.
In part due to this, and perhaps because colony worlds with small populations cannot support sophisticated social constructs, all spheres in the Cluster series suffer spherical regression. The father a colony is from its home star, the less technology the inhabitants use, while the social order begins to resemble periods of the home planet's past. For instance, the inhabitants of Outworld, Sphere Sol's farthest colony, are paleolithic tribes. They hunt with flint spears and make fire, but their society has little technology beyond that level.
Spherical regression does not create true copies of Earth or any world's past, however. Colonists know they are part of an interstellar empire, and they are aware of the technological and social differences on other planets. Furthermore, the home world mattermits some government and security personnel to all colony worlds. Therefore individual students of history can often use their knowledge of the home world's past to make their own planets more or less primitive than one would expect when simply calculating the distance from the home star.
Kirlian transfer
The central plot mechanism of the Cluster novels is that of transfer. Every living thing has a Kirlian aura that can be measured. Through transfer, the mind and personality of individuals with high aura can be sent to animate a body physically distant. For instance, a transferee living on Earth could be sent to Outworld and inhabit the body of one of that planet's stone-age tribesmen.Transfer is a refinement of mattermission technology, but because only the aura is transferred it is substantially less expensive. In the first three novels, the protagonists find themselves tranferring from alien body to alien body in order to combat threats from elsewhere in space.
Thousandstar and Viscous Circle
These later novels take place between Chaining the Lady and kirlian Quest. While the original Cluster trilogy tells epic stories of galactic scope, the later two books are smaller stories in the same setting. Instead of transferring to different worlds with each chapter, the protagonists spend almost the full novel on a single planet. See further details below.Relationship With Other Novels
Anthony first conceived of the Cluster series when writing But What of Earth?, a speculative novel in which the government discovers the secret of mattermission, making interstellar colonization feasible. Earth? follows developments on humanity's home planet as its civilization and resources dwindle when half the population leaves for the colony worlds.The Cluster series takes place roughly 500 years further in the future and is in continuity with Anthony's original manuscript of Earth?, published in an annotated edition by Tor Books in 1989. The Cluster series is not necessarily consistent with the first published version of Earth?, the heavily reworked 1976 Laser Books edition credited to Anthony and Robert Coulson as collaborators. According to Anthony this was an unathorized collaboration. More detail can be found on Anthony's main page.
After completing the original Cluster trilogy, Anthony returned to the earlier time frame. His three-volume Tarot series featured Brother Paul of the Holy Order of Vision, a major supporting character in Earth?, and is set some years after that earlier novel. At the same time Anthony wrote the two additional Cluster novels, Thousandstar and Viscous Circle.
Series synopsis
Cluster
Also know as Vicinity Cluster in the UK.Chaining the Lady
Kirlian Quest
Thousandstar
Viscous Circle
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