Prometheus Award: Best Novel nominee (1984).
Orion Shall Rise is a grand saga of future humanity
struggling back from near-ruin after a planet-wide nuclear war. The survivors
face a life-threatening limitation of resources as they strive to rise once
again to great heights of civilization.
Orion Shall Rise has a cast of countries: The Domain, dominated by
Skyholm – a giant platform floating thirty miles above Europe, savior during
destruction but now maintaining a reactionary and repressively stratified
society; Northwest Union, a loose-knit network of Scandinavian-style lodges
founded by survivors in the Pacific Northwest of North America; the Maurai
Federation, descendants of Maori natives from New Zealand who pursue a policy
of developing technology to use the natural energy of wind, sun and sea; the
many tribes and countries of the Mong who fled Asia over an ice bridge and
settled in the middle of North America. Already wars are being fought again,
most recently between the Normen of the Union, who wish to revive a benign
form of nuclear technology and the Maurai, who are unalterably opposed to its
use.
There is a cast of characters throughout: Talence lern Ferlay, a noble son of
Skyholm who loses his home through treachery; Ronica Birken, Survivor and
master of the Northwestern wilderness; Terai Lohannaso, sailor, trader and
intelligence man for the Maurai. These and dozens of others – spies,
peasants, librarians, minstrels, heroes and villains – show us a complex and
strange world as adventure follows adventure until a searing confrontation
brings the remnants of mankind once more to the edge of destruction – or the
fragile chance for new life for the race.
