A review of Dark Eden

Dark Eden is either the story of the beginning of a new human world out in the stars or the final death throes of a failed accidental world, depending on whether you're the glass half-empty or half-full type. In a strange twist of fate, a new Adam and Eve, Tommy and Angela, were left stranded on an alien world with no sun when their "Landing Veekle" took off with the Three Companions to look for a way home to Earth. That's the story that the "Family", the hundreds-strong community of humans of a few generations down the line, tell themselves to comfort themselves that help might be on the way. But it's also the chain that holds them in place, incapable of embracing their new world as they yearn for the old world, with it's "lecky-tricity" and "rayedyos" and other miracles they talk about, but have never seen.

For decades, they've waited in one place for help from Earth but now the food is running out and the younger generation, embodied by their leader John Redlantern, are getting restless. Should they brave "Snowy Dark", the border of their enclave where there are no bioluminescent plants to give them the light they need? Or stay put hoping for help they have no way of knowing is coming? This is the dilemma at the heart of Eden, acted out in the age-old rivalries of groups of humans everywhere. The incestuous nature of Family has resulted in genetic disorders, pitting "clawfoots" and "batfaces" against the rest, while the young argue with the old and men and women struggle to define themselves against each other.

John Redlantern is no sympathetic hero - while you may agree with his mission, he's a manipulative ego-maniac whose overconfidence and desire for attention, good or bad, spoils many chances for reconciliations. But it's that same ego that gives him his drive, determination and the ambition that may eventually save this small colony. Author Chris Beckett plays it smart by giving the reader more than one point of view, allowing them to see John not just for who he is but for what he does and the results he achieves. Other characters, like John's lover Tina and the clawfoot brother of a friend Jeff break their moulds, Tina by refusing to let John's magnetism or position as leader blind her and Jeff by being the quiet intellectual they couldn't do without, despite his disability.

But this is a story about a world and a civilisation more than about individuals. Eden, heated from within in places by what seem to be lava vents that lie close to the surface, populated by bioluminescent plants and fantastical but probable animals, is an incredible place. But it is well-drawn enough for you to know that it's somewhere you'd like to visit, not somewhere you'd like to stay. The stagnation of the community turns admonitions that were useful to the first or second generation into ironclad rules that strangle the small civilisation by the seventh or eighth. But the relentless impetus in humanity to survive and to thrive cannot be extinguished, regardless of how many individuals are left in its wake, and it's this drive that spurs the book to its open-ended conclusion. It's unclear whether a sequel is in the offing, but although a little short on closure for some issues, the open end seems fitting for a highly entertaining parable of humanity that echoes its biblical namesake.