Award-winning author Claire North, known for her speculative fiction, is prompting readers to consider the ultimate existential crisis: the impending destruction of Earth. Her latest space opera, 'Slow Gods', which is the New Scientist Book Club's July read, begins with the premise of a supernova threatening to obliterate a populated planet within a century. This dramatic starting point allows North to delve into the complex psychological, societal, and ethical challenges such a scenario would present.
North's narrative explores the human tendency to procrastinate on long-term threats. Initially, a distant supernova might be acknowledged but largely ignored by society for millennia, deemed a problem for future generations. However, as the timeline shrinks from centuries to decades, the reality of the impending catastrophe forces an urgent and fundamental transformation of civilisation. The author vividly portrays the personal horror of knowing the exact date a newborn grandchild will face an inevitable, horrific death from boiling oceans, atmospheric ignition, or radiation sickness.
The logistical scale of such a rescue operation is immense. North calculates that to evacuate a population of five billion within 100 years, an astonishing 50 million people would need to be relocated annually, requiring vast space elevators and colossal motherships. Yet, even with such a monumental effort, continuous population growth means new lives are being born faster than they can be saved. This leads to agonizing dilemmas: should population growth be limited, risking the 'death' of civilisation through a childless century, or should society accept that for every child saved, another will perish?
Beyond the sheer numbers, the novel confronts profound moral questions. Who gets priority for evacuation? Should it be the educated, the most fertile, or the famous? This raises the spectre of 'civilisational eugenics', leaving the disabled, vulnerable, and marginalised behind. A lottery system might seem fairer, but it strips individuals of agency, forcing them to passively await their fate. Even if individuals escape, the challenge of finding new homes is immense, with some worlds rejecting refugees entirely, and others only accepting small, isolated enclaves, leading to the fragmentation and eventual loss of cultural identity.
Ultimately, North's exploration in 'Slow Gods' posits that even if lives are saved, the essence of a civilisation – its customs, languages, and shared history – might be irrevocably lost, scattered across the stars and reduced to museum pieces. The novel serves as a powerful thought experiment on human resilience, the ethics of survival, and the definition of what it truly means to save a civilisation.
Source: Claire North