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. Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob (born August 6, 1934 in Oxford, England) is a writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony. ...

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 other spheres, each centered around a particular star: Spheres Polaris, Canopus, Spica, Nath, Mirzam, and Bellatrix as well as the huge, decadent Spheres Sador and Mintaka. A light year, abbreviated ly, is the distance light travels in one year: roughly 9. ... For other uses, see Polaris (disambiguation). ... Canopus (α Car / α Carinae / Alpha Carinae) is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina, and the second brightest star in the sky, with a visual magnitude of −0. ... Spica (α Vir / α Virginis / Alpha Virginis) is the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, and one of the brightest stars in the nighttime sky. ... Beta Tauri (β Tau / β Tauri) is the second brightest star in the constellation Taurus, with apparent magnitude 1. ... Beta Canis Majoris (β CMa / β Canis Majoris) is a star in the constellation of Canis Major. ... Bellatrix (γ Ori / γ Orionis / Gamma Orionis) is the third brightest star in the constellation Orion and the twenty-second brightest star in the nighttime sky. ... Gamma Cygni (γ Cyg / γ Cygni) is a star in the constellation Cygnus. ... Mintaka, also known as δ Orionis, is one of the three stars of the belt of the Orion constellation. ...

In the Cluster setting, races colonize other planets in three ways. The first is 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 cryonically 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. The third and most common method of colonist travel is via lifeships, slower but safer multigenerational vessels that may take centuries to reach their destination. The drawback of the lifeships is that as they plod through space, their occupants regress in technical sophistication. The word Teleportation was coined in the early 1900s by American writer Charles Fort to describe the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies, which he suggested may be connected. ... A Dewar human cryopreservation unit utilized by Alcor Life Extension Foundation Cryonics (often mistakenly called cryogenics) is the practice of cryopreserving humans or animals that can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine until resuscitation may be possible in the future. ...

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 -- i.e., the farther 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. By the mid 20th century humans had achieved a level of technological mastery sufficient to leave the surface of the planet for the first time and explore space. ... Social order is a concept used in sociology, history and other social sciences. ...

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. Kirlian photography refers to a form of contact print photography, theoretically associated with high-voltage. ... It has been suggested that Personality psychology be merged into this article or section. ...

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. The protagonist or main character is the central figure of a story. ...

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 unauthorized collaboration. More detail can be found on Anthony's main page. Tor Books is an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC which publishes popular fiction, and is particularly noted for its science fiction and fantasy titles. ... 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... Laser Books was a line of 58 paperback science fiction novels published from 1975 to 1977 by Canadian romance powerhouse Harlequin Books. ... Robert Stratton Buck Coulson (1928-1999) was a science fiction writer and, with his wife, writer and filmmaker Juanita Coulson, a well-known fan, filk singer, and fanzine editor. ... Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob (born August 6, 1934 in Oxford, England) is a writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony. ...

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. Tarot is the name of a sci-fi trilogy by Piers Anthony. ...

Series synopsis

Cluster

(Also know as Vicinity Cluster in the UK.)

As the story opens, the alien envoy Pnotl of Sphere Knyfh attempts to enlist the cooperation of Sphere Sol in a mutual crisis of galactic proportion: Galaxy Andromeda has discovered the secret of energy transfer and intends to use it to steal the basic energy of the Milky Way Galaxy. Knyfh proposes to give Sphere Sol the secret of transfer -- the ability to transfer an individual's Kirlian aura (and thus his entire mind and personality) into another "host." In exchange for this priceless knowledge, Knyfh and other Spheres request that Sphere Sol spread the technology to its neighboring Spheres, creating galactic coalition in which all minor spheres will patrol their own regions to find and weed out Andromedan agents. The Milky Way (a translation of the Latin Via Lactea, in turn derived from the Greek Galaxia Kuklos; or simply the Galaxy) is a barred spiral galaxy in the Local Group, and has special significance to humanity as the location of the solar system, which is located near the Orion...

Kirlian transfer, a technology known to the mysterious vanished culture known as The Ancients, is a millionth the effective cost of mattermission and has been sought for decades. This knowledge is proven by Pnotl himself, who pleads his case while hosted in a human body, and the government of Sol agrees to the plan.

Because a hosted aura fades at the rate of about 1 unit per Earth day, higher-Kirlian individuals last longer and thus have more freedom of movement. Sol's highest-Kirlian individual at the moment is Flint, a green-skinned native of Outworld, Sphere Sol's most distant planet. Flint has a Kirlian aura of 200, an eidetic memory (useful for memorizing the complex equations of Kirlian transfer that he will need to communicate to other spheres), extraordinary intelligence, and is highly adaptable. His mission is complicated, however, by the fact that he is pursued everywhere by a very high Kirlian female Andromedan agent -- somehow the Andromedans are able to detect and trace Kirlian transfers.

Flint embarks upon several missions to bring transfer technology to neighboring spheres, inhabiting various alien forms and learning a lot about alien sex, among other things. His efforts are successful despite a couple of false starts and the efforts of the Andromedan agent to prevent or kill him. In the process, the mutual attraction of their two vastly superior auras begin to create a conflict of loyalties. Upon discovery and investigation of an archaeological site of the Ancients in the Pleiades, Flint and a group of other non-Sol entities recover the information that will allow them also to detect and trace transfers, giving them parity with Andromeda. One of the group is revealed as the Andromedan agent and in an attempt to prevent her escape the entire site is destroyed. Pleiades refers to: Pleiades (star cluster) an open cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus. ...

Flint and his nemesis are, through the mechanism of the Ancient site, transferred into Mintakan bodies. Choosing to leave things as they are, with parity between their two galaxies, Flint and the Andromedan mate and remain together until their auras fade (which happens rapidly since their physical bodies have been destroyed).

Chaining the Lady

The book opens with the discovery that Andromeda, the enemy galaxy of the first novel, has discovered the secret of involuntary hosting: a sufficiently higher-Kirlian aura can in effect possess an individual of a lower-Kirlian aura. This has enabled Andromeda to secretly infiltrate the highest levels of government in Sphere Sol and its allies and resurrect its plot to steal the energy of the Milky Way. Spiritual possession is a concept of many religions and tales, where it is believed that a demon, or disincarnate being, may take temporary control of a human body, resulting in noticeable changes in behaviour. ...

Melody of Mintaka, a direct descendant of Flint of Outworld and his Andromedan nemesis, has a Kirlian aura of well over 200. She is impressed into service to "possess" and interrogate a captured Andromedan transferee. Melody, hosted in the young and beautiful body of Yael of Dragon, must like her ancestor Flint find a way to defeat the Andromedan threat and save the galaxy. The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...

The mysterious Ancients are present again in the form of their artifacts and sites. The themes of Tarot and of various myths of Sphere Sol (in this case that of Perseus and Andromeda) are carried throughout this novel as well -- for example, the interSphere fleet of starships has forms analogous to the Tarot suits of Disks, Cups, Wands and Swords. This article is about the structure, card imagery, and history of tarot decks, which today are often used for spiritual, esoteric, psychological, occult and/or divinatory purposes. ... Perseus and Andromeda is a text adventure game released in 1983 by Digital Fantasia on the Mysterious Adventures label. ...

Kirlian Quest

For a thousand years Sphere / of Andromeda suffered the stigma of having twice attempted to steal the energy of the Milky Way. Both times its plots were defeated by a super-Kirlian entity -- first Flint of Outworld and then Melody of Mintaka. As Kirlian Quest opens, a new threat has appeared on the horizon: the Space Amoeba, a fleet of alien ships one million strong, whose intentions are definitely hostile. Herald the Healer, descendant of Flint and Melody and a / of Andromeda, has the chance to redeem his species' honor and save the galaxy, but in order to do so he must solve the riddle of the Space Amoeba and of the Ancients themselves. Social stigma refers to severe social disapproval of personal characteristics that is against cultural norms. ... Look up Conspiracy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Conspiracy, as a legal term, is an agreement of two or more people either to commit a crime or to achieve a lawful end by unlawful means: see conspiracy (crime), and conspiracy (civil). ... A riddle is a form of word puzzle designed to test someones ingenuity and lateral thinking in arriving at a solution. ...

Thousandstar

A new Ancient Site has been discovered, and unlike others which are "dead" this one appears to be active and functioning. To determine which Sphere has the right to explore it and investigate its secrets, a competition is being held. Each competing team consists of a carefully-matched host and transferee pair, chosen for their complementary skills and knowledge. The tasks test all of the competitors' abilities to their limit and range from word puzzles to navigating past a black hole. However, both Heem of Highfalls and his transferee Jessica of Capella have deep dark secrets that may cost them not just the competition but their lives.

Viscous Circle

References