The Fifth Season

“Science fiction is no more written for scientists, then ghost stories are written for ghosts.”

I spotted this quote at a library where I had recently borrowed The Fifth Season, the first book in the Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin. In her acknowledgements, Jemisin mentions attending a NASA workshop aimed at writers; they’re apparently interested in the science sounding reasonable in science fiction. You might be envisioning wormholes, time-travel, force-fields, ion cannons, matter replicators, and all manner of advanced gadgetry.

While there is seemingly mysterious alien technology in The Fifth Season, that’s not primarily what the book is about. Like other excellent science fiction (the trilogy has a three-peat Hugo award cementing its bona fides!), the sociocultural exploration and questions of what it means to be human or other-than-human are the main story. In an effort to avoid spoilers, I won’t discuss these except to anchor some of my thoughts about the science. By focusing on the science, I am likely embarking on a fool’s errand. Take a moment to read the opening quote one more time!

My consumption of science fiction is not the broadest, so perhaps I found it novel and fascinating that the Broken Earth series is centered on the earth sciences. The Fifth Season opens with a map of the known world: one large supercontinent and, here’s the kicker, the tectonic plates on which it rests. This world is tectonically active, so much so, that geological phenomena are a key concern of its citizenry. Ages and eras are marked by seasons, including devastating ice-age fifth seasons that may have extinguished civilizations past; with new ones gingerly building upon the ruins of the old – at least that’s what the lore says. Much of the advice passed down has to do with surviving the ruin of the cold.

Like our own Earth, this world is composed of four parts or geospheres: lithosphere (land), hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. But the tectonics are more active. Ruin could come at any moment, without prior warning. No one dares to sail far from the coast because mega-tsunami walls of water could engulf you as earth-and-water are constantly on the move. There’s a reason this series is called Broken Earth. When the world breaks, the upheaval might signal the end of known civilization.

Within this world are a special group of people, seemingly human but carrying secret power. They are orogenes – ones who can manipulate the elements of the earth. They can quell quakes but can also cause them. Their power is feared by the people and the government of the day tries to keep them strictly controlled. Some are born with the ability even if their parents showed no signs of being able to perform orogeny,* akin to Hermione in the Harry Potter series. But the trait does seem to be passed down, a cause of concern to the populace. How orogeny is performed is less clear, although the unfolding investigation into its source is intriguing. (More is revealed in the second book, The Obelisk Gate.) Orogeny in a child begins instinctually, may remain feral and uncontrollable, or it may with training be manipulated with precision.

Trying to avoid spoilers, let me just say that orogeny has a sixth-sense feel, and there are parallels between orogeny in Broken Earth and magic in Harry Potter. But where J. K. Rowling doesn’t explore the science of magic and how it plays into the world’s ecosystem, N. K. Jemisin weaves a thread that keeps me, the scientist, intellectually engaged in the nature of orogeny. I’d previously speculated about such things in Magicians, Mutants, Midichlorians; and it’s interesting to see related ideas play out in Jemisin’s tale. (For example, she takes the energy considerations seriously.) And unlike the short time-frame covered in Harry Potter, themes in Broken Earth fittingly align with geological time scales – where evolution (geological, chemical, biological) become very interesting, at least to someone like me interested in the chemical origins-of-life. Jemisin does excellently handling these themes, NASA help or not. And she probably does even better handling the humanity-society themes. (I’m not an expert in those areas. Also remember the opening quote!)

Reading this “science fiction” was surprisingly symbiotic with my research-related non-fiction reading. I close with the quote below from The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere by Eric Smith and Harold Morowitz. I apologize that it is jargon-laden science non-fiction, written for scientists, but I found it insightful.

“As long as a permanent ocean and plate tectonics persisted on Earth, it does not seem that oxidized surface conditions could have been produced by geochemical mechanisms, akin to those at work either on Venus or on Mars. The establishment of a strong redox disequilibrium between an atmosphere and ocean concentrated with a strong oxidant such as O₂, and continually refreshed reduced crust, was the great chemical opportunity on a tectonic Earth, but it could not occur until a process much faster than tectonic recycling could sequester carbon and release oxygen. The emergence of the biosphere created this new timescale and the resulting qualitatively distinct, kinetically maintained, redox disequilibrium.”

*Orogeny isn’t a term I learned in a science class; I first encountered it playing Bios Megafauna.