The Enemy Stars

Lore & Background

The novel is set in a future where humanity travels to the stars in ships moving at half the speed of light, with crews teleporting to and from Earth via a mattercaster. The Southern Cross, humanity's first interstellar ship, is on a 450-year voyage to Alpha Crucis. Ten generations into the voyage, the last crew of four men—Terangi Maclaren, David Ryerson, Seiichi Nakamura, and Chang Sverdlov—arrive to study a dead star. During their mission, the ship's ion drive and mattercaster web are damaged by the star's unexpectedly strong magnetic field, stranding them. (Note: The novel states a 450-year voyage at half light-speed, implying a distance of 225 light-years, but the real distance to Alpha Crucis is about 320 light-years, creating a mathematical inconsistency.)

Reader's Guide

The Enemy Stars is significant for its exploration of relativistic space travel and the concept of a mattercaster, a teleportation device that allows instantaneous travel between ships and Earth. The novel's original title, We Have Fed Our Sea, references a line from Rudyard Kipling's poem 'The Song of the Dead,' which is quoted at the story's end. In 1967, after Gerald Feinberg hypothesized tachyons, Anderson rewrote his description of the mattercaster to incorporate that hypothesis. The novel also includes a sequel, 'The Ways of Love,' first published in 1979, which tells the story from the perspective of the alien who returned David Ryerson's body to the Southern Cross.

Did You Know?

• The original title refers to a line in a poem by Rudyard Kipling.
• After Gerald Feinberg hypothesized tachyons in 1967, Poul Anderson rewrote his description of the mattercaster.
• The sequel 'The Ways of Love' was first published in Destinies, Vol 1, No 2, which was published in late 1978, and later incorporated into the 1987 Baen Books edition.