The Jesus Incident
Encyclopedia
The Jesus Incident is the second science fiction
novel set in the Destination: Void universe by the American author Frank Herbert
and poet Bill Ransom
. It is a sequel to Destination: Void
, and has two sequels: The Lazarus Effect
and The Ascension Factor
.
The action of the book is divided between two settings, the internal spaces of Ship which is orbiting Pandora and the settlements on the planet. While the original crew of Ship, as described in Destination: Void, were cloned human beings from the planet Earth, by the time of The Jesus Incident, the crew has become a mixed bag of peoples from various cultures that have been accepted as crew members by Ship when it visited their planet as well as people who have been conceived and born on the ship. Evidently Ship has shown up at a number of planets as the suns of those planets were going nova
. Implied is that the various planets were other, failed experiments by Ship to establish a relationship with human beings. Ship refers to these as replays of human history, suggesting Ship itself has manipulated human history time and time again.
The Jesus Incident begins at a long, but indeterminate, time after the ending of Destination: Void. Ship's charge for humans to decide how to WorShip still remains unsatisfied. In The Jesus Incident, Ship has delivered the humans to a new planet, Pandora, upon which they are attempting to establish a colony. In the opening chapters, Ship reveals that Pandora will be a final test for the human race. Ship awakens the Chaplain/Psychiatrist Raja Flattery (part of the original Destination: Void crew that created the artificial consciousness of Ship) from hybernation, and reveals to him the true nature of this test. He tasks Flattery with intervening in the society which has developed on Pandora to solve this riddle of WorShip. Flattery is to help the humans to pass Ship's test or else risk the destruction of the race. Flattery assumes the name of Raja Thomas to mask his identity from the other shipmen.
The surface of the planet Pandora is 80% seas, and the sea is dominated by a type of kelp
which appears to be sentient. The land is overrun by a number of deadly predators who are efficient killers, requiring people on the planet surface to adapt to a highly stressful lifestyle living within a fortress. The main fortress is known as Colony, a small city that is predominately underground. When The Jesus Incident begins there have been three failed attempts at colonization of the surface. The current colony is starting a second colonization site, known as The Redoubt.
In addition to Raja Flattery, several main characters drive the narrative. Morgan Oakes is the head administrator of both the crew and the colonists and the central provocateur whose actions drive the conflict. Jesus Lewis is his main assistant as well as a biological engineer. Kerro Panille is a poet who has a special relationship with Ship. Legata Hamill is an administrative assistant and data analyst for Morgan Oakes. The planet Pandora itself with its non-human inhabitants is another main character of the book, echoing a strong version of the Gaia Hypothesis
. As the book progresses, the reader discovers that the kelp, the hylighters, and other creatures of the planet appear to be linked into a large entity with a shared consciousness, Avata.
Jesus Lewis is the manager and chief scientist of Lab One which is a genetic engineering facility that is working on genetically modified clones of human beings in order to develop a class of engineered human beings who can survive the predators of Pandora. The clones are viewed as organic tools much like they were presented in Destination: Void where clones are sent out in specially prepared space ships to create an artificial consciousness. There is a clear social distinction between clones and naturally born human beings, a distinction that in the end leads to the outbreak of a series of battles and confrontations (slave rebellion
s) between natural humans and clones as conflict over food supplies and assignment of risk escalates.
The other major project of Lab One is to create a tool that will eliminate the kelp living in the seas of Pandora. The kelp is viewed by the leadership of the Oakes administration as the major impediment to the exploitation of the seas as a source of food.
, worship
, resource allocation
, and religious violence
. Clones
and genetic engineering
take up themes of racism
. One of the major themes is leadership
and how the values of leaders influence a society through the actions and narrative
s of a society's leaders. There are echoes of Herbert's exploration of the effect of greed on the leaders within a society and how greedy leaders will warp a society in order to consolidate their own power, a theme in the Dune books as well as The Dosadi Experiment
.
The book makes several references to Frankenstein
, as an analogy to the relationship between Ship and humans.
, in which an AI
, known as Durandal, achieved rogue consciousness during an attack of a colony ship
by an alien race.
The book also served as a major source of inspiration for the developers of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
.
The setting of James Cameron's Avatar bears great similarities with that of The Jesus Incident. The planet has a globally interconnected, sentient plant which all lifeforms on the planet are dependent upon. The planets even bear the same name, Pandora, and each features a conflict between people with technology (Shipmen in the book, the Company/Marines in Avatar), and people subjugated by technology (clones in the book, and native people in Avatar).
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 set in the Destination: Void universe by the American author Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert
Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. Although a short story author, he is best known for his novels, most notably Dune and its five sequels...
and poet Bill Ransom
Bill Ransom
Bill Ransom is a science fiction writer born in Puyallup, Washington in 1945.-Early life and education:He began full-time employment at the age of eleven as an agricultural worker. He attended Washington State University on track and boxing scholarships, and the University of Puget Sound on a track...
. It is a sequel to Destination: Void
Destination: Void
Destination: Void is the first science fiction novel set in the Destination: Void universe by the American author Frank Herbert. A revised edition, edited and updated by the author, was released in 1978...
, and has two sequels: The Lazarus Effect
The Lazarus Effect
The Lazarus Effect is the third science fiction novel set in the Destination: Void universe by the American author Frank Herbert and poet Bill Ransom. It takes place some time after the events in The Jesus Incident.-Plot summary:...
and The Ascension Factor
The Ascension Factor
The Ascension Factor is the fourth and final science fiction novel set in the Destination: Void universe by the American author Frank Herbert and poet Bill Ransom. It takes place about twenty five years after The Lazarus Effect...
.
Plot introduction
The book takes place at an indeterminate time following the events in Destination: Void. At the end of Destination: Void the crew of the ship had succeeded in creating an artificial consciousness. The new conscious being, now known as 'Ship', gains a level of awareness that allows it to manipulate space and time. Ship instantly transports itself to a planet which it has decided the crew will colonize. The first book ends with a demand from Ship for the crew to learn how to WorShip or how to establish a relationship with Ship, a godlike being.The action of the book is divided between two settings, the internal spaces of Ship which is orbiting Pandora and the settlements on the planet. While the original crew of Ship, as described in Destination: Void, were cloned human beings from the planet Earth, by the time of The Jesus Incident, the crew has become a mixed bag of peoples from various cultures that have been accepted as crew members by Ship when it visited their planet as well as people who have been conceived and born on the ship. Evidently Ship has shown up at a number of planets as the suns of those planets were going nova
Nova
A nova is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion in a star caused by the accretion of hydrogen on to the surface of a white dwarf star, which ignites and starts nuclear fusion in a runaway manner...
. Implied is that the various planets were other, failed experiments by Ship to establish a relationship with human beings. Ship refers to these as replays of human history, suggesting Ship itself has manipulated human history time and time again.
The Jesus Incident begins at a long, but indeterminate, time after the ending of Destination: Void. Ship's charge for humans to decide how to WorShip still remains unsatisfied. In The Jesus Incident, Ship has delivered the humans to a new planet, Pandora, upon which they are attempting to establish a colony. In the opening chapters, Ship reveals that Pandora will be a final test for the human race. Ship awakens the Chaplain/Psychiatrist Raja Flattery (part of the original Destination: Void crew that created the artificial consciousness of Ship) from hybernation, and reveals to him the true nature of this test. He tasks Flattery with intervening in the society which has developed on Pandora to solve this riddle of WorShip. Flattery is to help the humans to pass Ship's test or else risk the destruction of the race. Flattery assumes the name of Raja Thomas to mask his identity from the other shipmen.
The surface of the planet Pandora is 80% seas, and the sea is dominated by a type of kelp
Kelp
Kelps are large seaweeds belonging to the brown algae in the order Laminariales. There are about 30 different genera....
which appears to be sentient. The land is overrun by a number of deadly predators who are efficient killers, requiring people on the planet surface to adapt to a highly stressful lifestyle living within a fortress. The main fortress is known as Colony, a small city that is predominately underground. When The Jesus Incident begins there have been three failed attempts at colonization of the surface. The current colony is starting a second colonization site, known as The Redoubt.
In addition to Raja Flattery, several main characters drive the narrative. Morgan Oakes is the head administrator of both the crew and the colonists and the central provocateur whose actions drive the conflict. Jesus Lewis is his main assistant as well as a biological engineer. Kerro Panille is a poet who has a special relationship with Ship. Legata Hamill is an administrative assistant and data analyst for Morgan Oakes. The planet Pandora itself with its non-human inhabitants is another main character of the book, echoing a strong version of the Gaia Hypothesis
Gaia hypothesis
The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.The scientific investigation of the...
. As the book progresses, the reader discovers that the kelp, the hylighters, and other creatures of the planet appear to be linked into a large entity with a shared consciousness, Avata.
Jesus Lewis is the manager and chief scientist of Lab One which is a genetic engineering facility that is working on genetically modified clones of human beings in order to develop a class of engineered human beings who can survive the predators of Pandora. The clones are viewed as organic tools much like they were presented in Destination: Void where clones are sent out in specially prepared space ships to create an artificial consciousness. There is a clear social distinction between clones and naturally born human beings, a distinction that in the end leads to the outbreak of a series of battles and confrontations (slave rebellion
Slave rebellion
A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by slaves. Slave rebellions have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery, and are amongst the most feared events for slaveholders...
s) between natural humans and clones as conflict over food supplies and assignment of risk escalates.
The other major project of Lab One is to create a tool that will eliminate the kelp living in the seas of Pandora. The kelp is viewed by the leadership of the Oakes administration as the major impediment to the exploitation of the seas as a source of food.
Major themes
The book deals with concepts such as Artificial IntelligenceArtificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, worship
Worship
Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity. The word is derived from the Old English worthscipe, meaning worthiness or worth-ship — to give, at its simplest, worth to something, for example, Christian worship.Evelyn Underhill defines worship thus: "The absolute...
, resource allocation
Resource allocation
Resource allocation is used to assign the available resources in an economic way. It is part of resource management. In project management, resource allocation is the scheduling of activities and the resources required by those activities while taking into consideration both the resource...
, and religious violence
Religious violence
Religious violence is a term that covers all phenomena where religion, in any of its forms, is either the subject or object of violent behaviour. Religious violence is, specifically, violence that is motivated by or in reaction to religious precepts, texts or doctrines...
. Clones
Cloning
Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...
and genetic engineering
Genetic engineering
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct human manipulation of an organism's genome using modern DNA technology. It involves the introduction of foreign DNA or synthetic genes into the organism of interest...
take up themes of racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
. One of the major themes is leadership
Leadership
Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Other in-depth definitions of leadership have also emerged.-Theories:...
and how the values of leaders influence a society through the actions and narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
s of a society's leaders. There are echoes of Herbert's exploration of the effect of greed on the leaders within a society and how greedy leaders will warp a society in order to consolidate their own power, a theme in the Dune books as well as The Dosadi Experiment
The Dosadi Experiment
The Dosadi Experiment is a science fiction novel written by Frank Herbert. It is the second full-length novel set in the ConSentiency universe established by Herbert in his novelette The Tactful Saboteur and continued in Whipping Star....
.
The book makes several references to Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
, as an analogy to the relationship between Ship and humans.
Influence on other works
The book is notable for inspiring the Marathon TrilogyMarathon Trilogy
The Marathon Trilogy is a science fiction series of first-person shooter computer games from Bungie, originally released for the Macintosh. The name Marathon is derived from the giant interstellar colony ship that provides the setting for the first game; the ship is constructed out of what used to...
, in which an AI
Ai
AI, A.I., Ai, or ai may refer to:- Computers :* Artificial intelligence, a branch of computer science* Ad impression, in online advertising* .ai, the ISO Internet 2-letter country code for Anguilla...
, known as Durandal, achieved rogue consciousness during an attack of a colony ship
Space colonization
Space colonization is the concept of permanent human habitation outside of Earth. Although hypothetical at the present time, there are many proposals and speculations about the first space colony...
by an alien race.
The book also served as a major source of inspiration for the developers of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is the critically acclaimed science fiction 4X turn-based strategy video game sequel to the Civilization series. Sid Meier, designer of Civilization, and Brian Reynolds, designer of Civilization II, developed Alpha Centauri after they left MicroProse to join the newly...
.
The setting of James Cameron's Avatar bears great similarities with that of The Jesus Incident. The planet has a globally interconnected, sentient plant which all lifeforms on the planet are dependent upon. The planets even bear the same name, Pandora, and each features a conflict between people with technology (Shipmen in the book, the Company/Marines in Avatar), and people subjugated by technology (clones in the book, and native people in Avatar).