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Emergence (novel)
Encyclopedia
Emergence is a science fiction
novel
written by David R. Palmer
. It first appeared as a novella published in Analog Science Fiction in 1981. Analog also published Part II, 'Seeking,' in 1983. The completed novel then was published by Bantam in 1984. The plot follows a precocious 11-year-old orphan girl, living in a post-apocalyptic United States. It had three printings through July 1985, and was republished in 1990 as a "Signature Special Edition" with a few minor edits and a new afterword by the author.
Emergence was Palmer's first published novel. It was developed from a pair of Hugo
and Nebula
award nominated novellas originally published in Analog magazine. The novel itself was nominated for a Hugo Award, a pair of Locus award
s (for first novel and science fiction novel), was a finalist for a Philip K. Dick Award, and won the Compton Crook Award
.
Palmer's sequel to Emergence, entitled Tracking, was serialized
in Analog in 2008. Wormhole Press was short-listed to release Tracking and re-release Emergence as both paperbacks and in hardcover, but as of October 2010 the publisher appears to be out-of-business.
By the time the narrative opens, Candy has acquired a high school education, some college, and learned karate, having achieved her Fifth Degree Black Belt, from her neighbor, 73-year-old Soo Kim McDivot, who she is led to believe is merely a retired schoolteacher. McDivot, whom she calls "Teacher", is actually the discoverer of the H. post hominem species, and has identified and continues to mentor and lead a group of them, the AAs. As part of her karate training, she has learned to release her hysterical strength
, which permits brief bursts of nearly superhuman activity.
With international relations rapidly deteriorating, Candy's father, publicly a small-town pathologist but secretly a government biowarfare expert, is called to Washington. Candy remains at home.
The following day a worldwide attack, featuring a bionuclear plague, wipes out virtually all of humanity (i.e., Homo sapiens). With pet bird Terry, a Hyacinthine macaw, her "lifelong retarded, adopted twin brother," who tends to "parrot" Candy's words even before she speaks, she survives the attack in the shelter beneath their house. Emerging three months later, she learns of her genetic heritage and sets off to search for others of her kind.
First the hunt turns up "Adam," a cheeky, irrepressibly punning, multitalented 13-year-old boy, who immediately sets out to win Candy's heart; next, Rollo Jones, a middle-aged physician with a broad history of survival-in-the-wilds experience ranging from a stint in the Peace Corps to mountain climbing; and finally, Kim Mellon, an early-20s mom whose background is in computer engineering with Lisa, her six-year-old daughter. Rollo reveals himself as a sociopath, whom Candy is forced to kill defending Terry and herself. Adam, Kim, and Lisa join Candy's quest for the AA community. As part of the search, Adam reveals that he is an ultralight aircraft pilot. Later he teaches Candy to fly.
Thereafter, an ultralight engine failure separates Candy from the others. After getting it running again, she spots a contrail, which leads her to Vandenberg Space Shuttle Launch Complex, where Teacher and the AAs are laboring to preflight a shuttle, renamed the Nathan Hale. They've identified those who wiped out mankind, the Bratstvo, translated as the "Brotherhood," a cabal of H. sapiens, working from inside the Russian military to destroy all H. post hominems. As insurance, they've placed a doomsday device in geosynchronous orbit, a Strontium
-90 bomb whose fallout will render Earth uninhabitable for 200 years.
At this point, however, the AAs' plans have come unstuck: They've modified the Hale to reach geosynch orbit, though it's a one-way, suicide voyage for the crew; but the miniature robot handler they've built to penetrate the bomb-carrying rocket and disarm the doomsday device isn't up to the task. Candy realizes, with her small size and hysterical strength training, she's the only one who can get inside the warhead chamber and disarm the bomb. Despite the fact that it's a suicide mission, she volunteers.
Meanwhile, as Adam, Kim, and Lisa search for Candy, Terry begins relaying her thoughts, though initially they don't realize that's what they're hearing.
Arriving in orbit, Kyril Svetlanov, thought to be a Bratstvo defector, kills Harris Gilbert, the mission commander. Kyril turns out to have been a double agent, whose job ultimately was to sabotage the mission, but he doesn't know about Candy's karate skills. She breaks his neck and assumes responsibility for completing the mission.
Navigating across to the bomb-carrying rocket in a spacesuit, she disables the warhead. Then she resets the navigational computer to land on the dry lake at Edwards Air Force Base and tries to secure herself against a bulkhead in preparation for the stresses of reentry.
As the missile begins to power-up for reentry, Adam finally realizes Terry is in fact relaying Candy's thoughts; that somehow she is in fact in space, about to attempt reentry in a non-human-rated vehicle, and that she'll soon be landing at Edwards. He, Kim, and Lisa arrive as the missile is touching down, just in time to extract her, resuscitate her, and treat her injuries.
The author has left a number of threads trailing at the conclusion, some of which are followed-up on 25 years later in a sequel Tracking, serialized in Analog Science and Fact magazine in the summer and fall of 2008.
Candy's journal, in what used to be referred to as "telegraphic style," which is based on the means employed by those sending telegrams via Western Union late in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries to save money. At that time telegrams were the quickest way to transmit hardcopy messages over significant distances. They were expensive; Western Union charged by the word. Hence unnecessary words were omitted; pronouns, conjunctions, most adjectives and/or adverbs.
The primary narrator's voice in Emergence is thus a sort of "verbal shorthand", and she wrote her journal in Pitman shorthand
.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
written by David R. Palmer
David R. Palmer
David R. Palmer , Highland Park High School , is a science fiction author who has been nominated three times for Hugo Awards. He is married and lives in Florida , where he works as a court reporter.-Published works:...
. It first appeared as a novella published in Analog Science Fiction in 1981. Analog also published Part II, 'Seeking,' in 1983. The completed novel then was published by Bantam in 1984. The plot follows a precocious 11-year-old orphan girl, living in a post-apocalyptic United States. It had three printings through July 1985, and was republished in 1990 as a "Signature Special Edition" with a few minor edits and a new afterword by the author.
Emergence was Palmer's first published novel. It was developed from a pair of Hugo
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
and Nebula
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
award nominated novellas originally published in Analog magazine. The novel itself was nominated for a Hugo Award, a pair of Locus award
Locus Award
The Locus Award is a literary award established in 1971 and presented to winners of Locus magazine's annual readers' poll. Currently, the Locus Awards are presented at an annual banquet...
s (for first novel and science fiction novel), was a finalist for a Philip K. Dick Award, and won the Compton Crook Award
Compton Crook Award
The Compton Crook Award is presented to the best first novel of the year in the field of Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror by the members of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, Inc, at their annual Baltimore-area science fiction convention, Balticon, held on Memorial Day weekend in the...
.
Palmer's sequel to Emergence, entitled Tracking, was serialized
Serial (literature)
In literature, a serial is a publishing format by which a single large work, most often a work of narrative fiction, is presented in contiguous installments—also known as numbers, parts, or fascicles—either issued as separate publications or appearing in sequential issues of a single periodical...
in Analog in 2008. Wormhole Press was short-listed to release Tracking and re-release Emergence as both paperbacks and in hardcover, but as of October 2010 the publisher appears to be out-of-business.
Plot
Candidia Maria Smith-Foster, an eleven-year-old girl, is unaware that she's a Homo post hominem, mankind's next evolutionary step. Hominems have higher IQs, they're stronger, faster, more resistant to illness and trauma, and have quicker reflexes. Their eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell are superior as well.By the time the narrative opens, Candy has acquired a high school education, some college, and learned karate, having achieved her Fifth Degree Black Belt, from her neighbor, 73-year-old Soo Kim McDivot, who she is led to believe is merely a retired schoolteacher. McDivot, whom she calls "Teacher", is actually the discoverer of the H. post hominem species, and has identified and continues to mentor and lead a group of them, the AAs. As part of her karate training, she has learned to release her hysterical strength
Hysterical strength
Hysterical strength describes displays of extreme strength by humans, beyond what is believed to be normal. It is a speculative term that is not recognized in medical academia; the concept has only a small body of anecdotal evidence to support it....
, which permits brief bursts of nearly superhuman activity.
With international relations rapidly deteriorating, Candy's father, publicly a small-town pathologist but secretly a government biowarfare expert, is called to Washington. Candy remains at home.
The following day a worldwide attack, featuring a bionuclear plague, wipes out virtually all of humanity (i.e., Homo sapiens). With pet bird Terry, a Hyacinthine macaw, her "lifelong retarded, adopted twin brother," who tends to "parrot" Candy's words even before she speaks, she survives the attack in the shelter beneath their house. Emerging three months later, she learns of her genetic heritage and sets off to search for others of her kind.
First the hunt turns up "Adam," a cheeky, irrepressibly punning, multitalented 13-year-old boy, who immediately sets out to win Candy's heart; next, Rollo Jones, a middle-aged physician with a broad history of survival-in-the-wilds experience ranging from a stint in the Peace Corps to mountain climbing; and finally, Kim Mellon, an early-20s mom whose background is in computer engineering with Lisa, her six-year-old daughter. Rollo reveals himself as a sociopath, whom Candy is forced to kill defending Terry and herself. Adam, Kim, and Lisa join Candy's quest for the AA community. As part of the search, Adam reveals that he is an ultralight aircraft pilot. Later he teaches Candy to fly.
Thereafter, an ultralight engine failure separates Candy from the others. After getting it running again, she spots a contrail, which leads her to Vandenberg Space Shuttle Launch Complex, where Teacher and the AAs are laboring to preflight a shuttle, renamed the Nathan Hale. They've identified those who wiped out mankind, the Bratstvo, translated as the "Brotherhood," a cabal of H. sapiens, working from inside the Russian military to destroy all H. post hominems. As insurance, they've placed a doomsday device in geosynchronous orbit, a Strontium
Strontium
Strontium is a chemical element with the symbol Sr and the atomic number 38. An alkaline earth metal, strontium is a soft silver-white or yellowish metallic element that is highly reactive chemically. The metal turns yellow when exposed to air. It occurs naturally in the minerals celestine and...
-90 bomb whose fallout will render Earth uninhabitable for 200 years.
At this point, however, the AAs' plans have come unstuck: They've modified the Hale to reach geosynch orbit, though it's a one-way, suicide voyage for the crew; but the miniature robot handler they've built to penetrate the bomb-carrying rocket and disarm the doomsday device isn't up to the task. Candy realizes, with her small size and hysterical strength training, she's the only one who can get inside the warhead chamber and disarm the bomb. Despite the fact that it's a suicide mission, she volunteers.
Meanwhile, as Adam, Kim, and Lisa search for Candy, Terry begins relaying her thoughts, though initially they don't realize that's what they're hearing.
Arriving in orbit, Kyril Svetlanov, thought to be a Bratstvo defector, kills Harris Gilbert, the mission commander. Kyril turns out to have been a double agent, whose job ultimately was to sabotage the mission, but he doesn't know about Candy's karate skills. She breaks his neck and assumes responsibility for completing the mission.
Navigating across to the bomb-carrying rocket in a spacesuit, she disables the warhead. Then she resets the navigational computer to land on the dry lake at Edwards Air Force Base and tries to secure herself against a bulkhead in preparation for the stresses of reentry.
As the missile begins to power-up for reentry, Adam finally realizes Terry is in fact relaying Candy's thoughts; that somehow she is in fact in space, about to attempt reentry in a non-human-rated vehicle, and that she'll soon be landing at Edwards. He, Kim, and Lisa arrive as the missile is touching down, just in time to extract her, resuscitate her, and treat her injuries.
The author has left a number of threads trailing at the conclusion, some of which are followed-up on 25 years later in a sequel Tracking, serialized in Analog Science and Fact magazine in the summer and fall of 2008.
Style
The book is a first-person narrative, written in the form ofCandy's journal, in what used to be referred to as "telegraphic style," which is based on the means employed by those sending telegrams via Western Union late in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries to save money. At that time telegrams were the quickest way to transmit hardcopy messages over significant distances. They were expensive; Western Union charged by the word. Hence unnecessary words were omitted; pronouns, conjunctions, most adjectives and/or adverbs.
The primary narrator's voice in Emergence is thus a sort of "verbal shorthand", and she wrote her journal in Pitman shorthand
Pitman Shorthand
Pitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman , who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds, and words are, for the most part, written...
.