Strata (novel)

''Strata'' is a 1981 science fiction comedy novel by English writer Terry Pratchett. It is one of Pratchett's first novels and among the few science fiction novels he wrote, along with ''The Dark Side of the Sun'', '' Only You Can Save Mankind'', ''The Nome Trilogy'' and the co-authored The Long Earth.

Although ''Strata'' may take place in a different fictional universe and is classed more science fiction than fantasy, it could be said to be a kind of precursor to the ''Discworld'' novels, as it also features a flat Earth similar to the Discworld. It has been called a "pre-consideration" of Discworld, though the plot and characters are modelled on a parody of the novel ''Ringworld'' by Larry Niven.

Plot summary

Kin Arad is a human planetary engineer working for "the Company", a human organisation that manufactures habitable planets using techniques and equipment salvaged from an extinct alien race, the "Spindle Kings", who excelled at terraforming.

The express purpose of the Company's planet-manufacturing business is to create dispersed branches of humanity, diverse enough to ensure the whole species' survival for eternity. The Earth's population in the past has been decimated due to the lethal "Mindquakes", epidemic mass deaths caused by too much homogeneity among the populace.

All planets built by the Company are carefully crafted with artificial strata containing synthetic fossils, indistinguishable from the real thing. On occasion, however, mischievous Company employees attempt to place anomalous objects in the strata as practical jokes, like running shoes and other out-of-place artifacts, hoping to raise confusion among future archaeologists when the planets' beginnings have been long forgotten. However the Company forbids this, and secretly monitors the generated strata in order to detect embedded jokes, fearing such actions may cause the collapse of entire civilizations when the artifacts are eventually unearthed.

Kin and two aliens are recruited by the mysterious Jago Jalo to join an expedition. One alien is a paranoid, four-armed, frog-like, muscular "kung" named Marco. The other alien is a bear-like "shand", historian and linguist nicknamed Silver. Jago Jalo is a human who returned from a relativistic journey he embarked on more than a thousand years ago, where he made a stunning discovery: A flat Earth.

When the team rendezvous with Jago Jalo on the kung homeworld, the violent Jalo unexpectedly has a heart attack and dies. Kin Arad is shocked by the large store of weapons on-board Jalo's spaceship, and has misgivings about the expedition; Silver and Marco, however, see the possibility of reaping great technological rewards and launch the vessel on autopilot.

When the expedition arrives at Jalo's pre-programmed coordinates, they find a flattened version of the medieval Eastern hemisphere of the Earth they had originally departed from, before their disturbing rendezvous with Jalo. Clearly artificial, the disc rotates around its hub, and is contained inside a gigantic hollow sphere with tiny artificial "stars" affixed to the interior, augmented with a small meandering artificial sun, moon, and fake planets revolving around it.

Their ship is hit by one of the "planets" wandering on the interior of the sphere, so Kin, Marco, and Silver are forced to abandon ship. They land on the flat planet with the help of their "lift-belt" equipped suits, while their ship crashes. A return from the flat world now seems impossible, but hoping for assistance from the disc's mysterious builders, Kin, Marco, and Silver set off towards a structure they had spotted at the disc's hub. It is the only thing on the flat "Earth" which does not match the geography of the spherical Earth they left.

En route, the team encounter the superstitious Medieval inhabitants of the disc, who believe the end of the world is near, due to increasingly chaotic climate (caused by the disc's machinery breaking down), the recent disappearance of one of their planets, and the general devastation caused by the ship's crash. The three travelers also discover a number of other differences.

What Kin Arad knows as "Reme" is called "Rome" on the disc, and there is a strange "Christos cult" that is completely unfamiliar to Kin. Also, Venus is conspicuously lacking its giant (lunar-sized) moon "Adonis", which dominates the sunset sky on the Earth Kin Arad came from, which was formative in leading humanity to an early heliocentric world view.

Since only the Eastern hemisphere of Earth is represented, the continent of America is completely missing, so Kin, Marco, and Silver rescue a party of Vikings in the process of searching for Vinland, when their ship is about to sail over the edge of the world.

The flat world is apparently an extremely old and sophisticated automated system. In addition, there are real magical creatures and objects on the disc – Demons, and magic purses, and flying carpets – all of which, the travelers deduce, are themselves highly advanced, sophisticated technological constructs, just like the disc.

The travelers eventually reach the structure at the hub and make contact with the disc’s automated control-systems. They are told that (aside from the recent damage) the sheer build-up of entropy in the old machinery has exceeded the capacity of its advanced robotic maintenance. Catastrophic failure threatens the disc’s further existence. The machines offer to exchange their advanced technology for the construction of a real (spherical) planet as a refuge for the disc "Earth" inhabitants. Kin, the planetary engineer, agrees. She is excited about the massive task at hand; just like the parallel character Louis Wu in ''Ringworld'', Kin is over two hundred years old, and in danger of becoming tired of life.

The implication of the denouement is that the conventional planet Kin Arad will build is in fact the readers' own "Earth". By the end of the story, Kin comes to the further suspicion that the builders of the flat world constructed the whole universe. The evidence of previous races would then be hoaxes, and the flat world itself would be a prank by the universe’s construction crew – analogous to the artificial strata Kin and the Company manufacture, and the occasional prankster employees inserting hoaxes in the artificial strata.

Reception

John T. Sapienza, Jr. reviewed ''Strata'' for ''Different Worlds'' magazine and stated that "The most world-shaking concept in ''Strata'' is the cosmology. Humanity builds worlds to be colonized, complete with their own fossil history created by engineer/artists. But there's more - other races of world-builders existed before humanity, and before them were starbuilders, and before them were the stars that were themselves intelligent beings. A lovely idea, and one which the author tops at the end of the book! I highly recommend it."

Reviews

*Review by Allan Jenoff (1982) in ''Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review'', #3, April 1982https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?979
*Review by Chris Bailey (1982) in ''Vector'' 109
*Review by Terry Broome (1988) in ''Paperback Inferno'', #73
*Review wedishby Tommy Persson (1988) in ''Månblad Alfa'', 2 1988?
*Review by Michael J. Tolley s by Michael Tolley(1990) in ''SF Commentary'', #68
*Review by Sue Thomason (1994) in ''Vector'' 179
*Review by Colin Steele (2001) in ''SF Commentary'', #77

References

External links

Annotations for ''Strata''


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1981 British novels
1981 science fiction novels
British science fiction novels
Comic science fiction novels
Novels by Terry Pratchett
Fiction about xenoarchaeology