page_title: Epsilon Eridani in fiction
section_title: Literature
hierarchical_section_title: Epsilon Eridani in fiction / Literature
caption_attribution_description: English: This artist's conception shows the closest known planetary system to our own, called Epsilon Eridani. Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show that the system hosts two asteroid belts, in addition to previously identified candidate planets and an outer comet ring. Epsilon Eridani is located about 10 light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. It is visible in the night skies with the naked eye. The system's inner asteroid belt appears as the yellowish ring around the star, while the outer asteroid belt is in the foreground. The outermost comet ring is too far out to be seen in this view, but comets originating from it are shown in the upper right corner. Astronomers think that each of Epsilon Eridani's asteroid belts could have a planet orbiting just outside it, shepherding its rocky debris into a ring in the same way that Jupiter helps keep our asteroid belt confined. The planet near the inner belt was previously identified in 2000 via the radial velocity, or "star wobble," technique, while the planet near the outer belt was inferred when Spitzer discovered the belt. The inner belt orbits at a distance of about 3 astronomical units from its star —or about the same position as the asteroid belt in our own solar system (an astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and our sun). The second asteroid belt lies at about 20 astronomical units from the star, or a position comparable to Uranus in our solar system. The outer comet ring orbits from 35 to 90 astronomical units from the star; our solar system's analogous Kuiper Belt extends from about 30 to 50 astronomical units from the sun. Français&#160;: A traduire...
context_page_description: The planetary systems of stars other than the Sun and the Solar System are a staple element in much science fiction. Epsilon Eridani is the fifth-brightest star in the riverine southern constellation of Eridanus. An orange star slightly smaller and less massive than the Sun, and relatively close to the Solar System, it is frequently featured in works of science fiction. It is classified as a type K2 star, with the corresponding suggestion that it has a stable habitable zone and is well suited for life. However, one factor which weakens the case for habitability is its youth—as little as 200 million years old—and consequent high levels of ultraviolet emission.
context_section_description: There follow references to Epsilon Eridani as a location in space or the center of a planetary system, categorized by genre.
  Dorsai! (1960, also published as The Genetic General), and other novels in the unfinished Childe Cycle by Gordon R. Dickson. Donal Graeme, a warrior extraordinaire from the mercenary homeworld Dorsai, and second incarnation of the series' evolutionary superman, launches his meteoric military career with service in several police actions on the vividly drawn planets Harmony and Association lying under the small orange Epsilon Eridani sun (see graphic).
  "Conquest by Default" (1968), a short story by Vernor Vinge originally published in Analog and later included in The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001). An alien civilization native to Epsilon Eridani II (the planet Miki) arrives in full force at the Solar System to place the third %wrlyg Support Fleet in a parking orbit high above the Earth, their looming presence decidedly intimidating thanks to a significant edge in technology. The Mikin culture is anarchic, acquisitive, cosmopolitan, and wildly diverse. In the story, as told by Scholar Ron Melmwn (a Mikin anthropologist who establishes tentative inter-species rapport with his human counterparts, professor Dahlmann and his daughter Mary), culture shock abounds as men and women interact with visitors who are bent on immigration, trade—and maybe exterminating the human race.
  The Napoleons of Eridanus (1976), The Emperor of Eridanus (1983), and The Eridani Colonists (1984), a French language trilogy written by  Claude Pierre Marie Avice, as by Pierre Barbet. A squadron of Napoleonic soldiers is kidnapped by aliens and hustled off to the Epsilon Eridani system, whence they unaccountably conquer a space empire.
  "Singularity" (1978), a short story by Mildred Downey Broxon. A scientific team monitors the last days of the intelligent but radically alien tribes of Epsilon Eridani's frigid second planet, Mancken's World, as a wandering stellar black hole finds its way through the star's planetary system. The hole makes a feast of the gas giant fifth planet but passes nowhere near Mancken's; however on its close encounter with ε Eridani itself, it will raise a storm of huge planet-scouring flares. The natives, whose prescient mythology has left them not unprepared for the event, calmly await the apocalypse along with a lone abandoned—and fearful—human observer.
  Downbelow Station (1981) and other Alliance-Union universe works, novels by C. J. Cherryh. Epsilon Eridani is the site of Viking Station, a space station founded after the discovery of Pell's World in the Tau Ceti system, and which later joins the Union.
  Foundation's Edge (1982), a novel by Isaac Asimov. In this transitional novel between Asimov's Robot novels and his later-set Galactic Empire novels of the Foundation series, the planet Comporellon of Epsilon Eridani (previously named BaleyWorld after Elijah Baley's son Bentley) was the first non-Spacer extraterrestrial planet settled by Earthmen, in the second wave of stellar emigration after the events that wrapped up the robot series.
  Starburst (1982), a novel by Frederik Pohl. A crew of superb human specimens is sent on what they believe is mankind's first voyage to a planet in another star system. Dr. Dieter von Knefhausen knows better—for there is no planet, no place to go, and no place from which to return. In a fabrication recalling the supposedly fake NASA Moon landings of an earlier century Knefhausen has planned it that way. However, by the end of the tale, humans really do reach the stars, as the protagonist Jeron "... [brings] the fleet of golden globes to the third planet of Epsilon Eridani."
  Eon (1985), a novel by Greg Bear. The Solar System is visited by the Stone, a Big Dumb Object that appears to be an artifact sent backward in time from a future human civilization. Records left aboard by the futurians suggest that in their remote past—the Earth's present—the asteroid starship, called by them the Thistledown, was dispatched to Epsilon Eridani to found a new home for humankind fo
caption: Artist's conception showing two dust clouds, multiple rocky bodies, and a planet (left) orbiting Epsilon Eridani (right)
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