Originally published: 2020
No Marigolds in the Promised Land is, chronologically, the first book of the Compact Universe series. The story tells of John Farno, who, while camping out in a rover on the Mars-like Farigha, is awakened by two of the fusion blasts that destroy the terraforming colony. With no way to communicate or get off the planet, he must learn to survive off the contents of his rover and supplies left at campsites and buried storage bays.
Over a period of a month, Farno will cause an AI interface to gain sentience, interact with an avatar of the galaxy’s richest man, and somehow get the attention of Earth.
Plot
John Farno, a bot wrangler on the terraforming world of Farigha, is awoken one night as two distant fusion blasts batter his rover where he’s been camping out. With the contents of the rover his only means of survival, he first must determine if any of the domes have survived. Scrounging supplies from campsites and underground storage caverns, he finds dome after dome flattened. To ease his loneliness and get help figuring out how to send for help, he overlays the rover’s AI with an interface based on a terraforming engineer who left the planet months before. She becomes full-fledged virtual person. But he also encounters a solid hologram of shipping magnate Tol Germanicus, who also assists him. Eventually, they find Solaris, an intact, almost completed dome. His AI companion, who assumes the name Persephone, assumes control of the dome’s construction bots.
Finally, Farno figures out how to get the destroyed hypergate to send a signal back to another Compact world. This is noticed by Patty Friese, a hypergate operator over The Caliphate, one of the Compact‘s “Big Five” worlds. Her finding brings her to the attention of Vice Admiral Burke, who brings her to Earth and assigns her to the Alcubierre, the Compact’s only commissioned Warp Ship. Warp drive, only recently perfected, makes less noise than the wormhole travel used by human and other species. They will travel to Farigha to discreetly retrieve Farno, but it will take several days to get there. In the meantime, the aliens who destroyed the colony return. Farno rigs a rover to blow it’s fusion generator in a primitive fusion bomb. However, he also loses Germanicus, whose avatar transmits itself back to Earth with a hyperdrone arrives looking for an update.
The Alcubierre, which has acquired a shuttle attached to its side, arrives and sends down Friese and another crewmember to retrieve Farno. However, the aliens return in a large warship. Burke arrives, however, just in time aboard the Utopia Planitia giving both the shuttle and the Alcubierre safe haven and destroying the alien ship. While they travel up to the ship, Germanicus’s avatar finds Persephone in the shuttle’s computer systems and takes her offline for “reprogramming.”
Author’s notes:
No Marigolds was originally a serialized newsletter story. The parallel to The Martian was deliberate, especially when the Alcubierre plotline is introduced. The story establishes many of the tropes used in the Compact Universe.
The dome Musk was named prior to the current regime at Twitter (which we refuse to call X.) As the dome was destroyed and its namesake’s reputation flagging, the reader may assume the dome’s replacement would bear a different name.
Characters:
John FarnoPatty Friese
Persephone
Tol Germanicus
Admiral Eileen Burke
Fleet Admiral Tran Vu
Commander Linda Havak
Danuq
Worlds:
FarighaThe Caliphate
Earth
Dakota
Tian
Ships:
Utopia Planitia
Alcubierre
Reading Order:
Suggested: First book, followed by Gimme Shelter
Chronologically:
Concurrent with Tishla's Journey