Orphans of the Helix
A spinship crew aids Ousters against an ancient harvester.
"Orphans of the Helix" is a science fiction short story by American writer Dan Simmons, part of his Hyperion Cantos universe. It was first published in the 1999 anthology Far Horizons and won the 2000 Locus Award for best novella.
Quick Facts
- Author
- Dan Simmons
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Series
- Hyperion Cantos
- Genre
- Science fiction
- Published in
- Far Horizons
- Published
- 1999
Facts from the source article.
Setting
The story takes place more than 481 years after The Rise of Endymion, with the Pax defeated and the Aenean movement aiding colonization. The "Amoiete Spectrum Helix", reconstituted after Pax persecution, sends about 600,000 colonists on a spinship built by Aeneans, who permit use of a redesigned Hawking drive that reduces harm to the Void Which Binds.
Plot summary
The spinship Helix, still traveling to its destination, receives a distress signal from a binary star system. Four of the five shipboard AIs, each patterned after a Japanese literary figure, decide to investigate, noting an orbital forest around the smaller star that is neither Ouster nor Templar construction. Awakened crewmembers enter the system and find hundreds of thousands of space-adapted Ousters, who plead for help against an enormous harvester spaceship that visits every 57 years. The harvester sees Ouster and Templar settlements as infestations and attacks them, gradually destroying the colony's technology over centuries. A brief assault by a Helix vessel reveals the ancient harvester is minimally defended and weakened by age, easily destroyed. However, the crew hesitates to destroy it, as the harvester presumably serves its creators, and its destruction might condemn that civilization to slow starvation, even though no inhabitants were seen in the red-giant system.
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Elsewhere in Hyperion Cantos
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