The Saga of Pliocene Exile by Julian May
"The Saga of Pliocene Exile" is a science fiction narrative set in the twenty-second century, where a coalition of five alien races intervenes to save humanity from self-destruction. These aliens, recognizing human potential for metapsychic abilities, invite Earth to join their advanced civilization, the Galactic Milieu. However, this utopian society imposes strict regulations, including a prohibition on childbearing, leading a group of ninety thousand individualistic humans to escape to Pliocene France via a timegate.
Among these exiles is Group Green, comprising diverse characters such as Aiken Drum, a trickster with immense potential, and Elizabeth Orme, a Grand Master Farspeaker who has lost her powers. Upon arrival, they encounter the Tanu, a ruling group that enslaves humans for reproduction due to their own declining fertility. Tensions escalate as Group Green members strive to navigate their new world while confronting the oppressive Tanu regime, leading to a complex interplay of rebellion and power dynamics.
Key plot points include Felice's determination to challenge the Tanu, Elizabeth's unique role as a metapsychic operative, and Aiken's ambition for leadership. The story culminates in a catastrophic event that alters the social landscape of Pliocene Europe, forcing characters to confront their pasts and future possibilities. Ultimately, the narrative explores themes of freedom, power, and the consequences of societal structures in a vividly imagined prehistoric setting.
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The Saga of Pliocene Exile
First published:The Many-Colored Land (1981), The Golden Torc (1982), The Nonborn King (1983), and The Adversary (1984)
Type of work: Novels
Type of plot: Science fiction—future history
Time of work: Primarily 6,000,000 b.c.e., with flashforwards to the twenty-second century
Locale: Europe of the Pliocene era and various planets in the Milky Way galaxy
The Plot
The Saga of Pliocene Exile begins in the twenty-second century, after a coalition of five alien races, each possessing metapsychic powers blended in mental and spiritual Unity, has intervened to prevent humans from destroying themselves. Believing that humans possess the greatest metapsychic potential in the Milky Way, the aliens have invited Earth to join their benevolent Galactic Milieu in advance of humanity’s psychosocial maturation. With the aid of Milieu science, humanity has colonized dozens of planets, eliminating poverty, pollution, and overpopulation. The aliens have also taught humans how to utilize their developing metafunctions of farspeaking, creativity, psychokinesis, coercion, and redaction (mind-healing).
Utopia, however, has its price: The Galactic Milieu, a highly structured civilization, prohibits childbearing. Ninety thousand individualistic humans, with the Milieu’s blessing, escape the strictures via a one-way timegate to Pliocene France. Among those who choose exile are the members of Group Green, including Aiken Drum, a brilliant and talented trickster with vast latent metapsychic potential; Sister Annamaria (Amerie) Rocarro, a burned out nun and physician; Stein Oleson, a huge crustal-plate driller who resembles his Viking ancestors; Elizabeth Orme, a Grand Master Farspeaker and Redactor who has lost her metapsychic powers after a near-fatal accident; Richard Voorhees, a cashiered space captain; Claude Majewski, an elderly paleobotanist; Brian Grenfell, an anthropologist; and Felice Landry, a deeply disturbed young athlete whose latent metafunctions defy measurement.
As they exit the timegate, these timefarers discover another group of exiles. Pliocene Europe is ruled by the Tanu, who have fled the Duat Galaxy in order to practice their barbaric battle religion. Metapsychically latent, the Tanu wear golden torcs that raise them to metapsychic operancy. Their Firvulag brethren do not physically resemble the tall, slender Tanu, but they are metapsychically operant. Their reproduction devastated by Earth’s solar radiation, the Tanu have instituted human concubinage; most fertile Firvulag despise humans on principle.
Humans high in latent metafunctions may receive silver torcs—with control circuits as well as metafunction enhancers—and provisional entrance to Tanu society. Loyal humans may later be promoted to gold-torc status. Other valuable timefarers wear gray slave torcs, a variation of those used on the ramapithecene apes who perform most manual labor. Thousands of torcless humans also serve the Tanu. A militant minority have escaped to live in the wilderness as free “Lowlives,” a guerrilla group organized by Madame Guderian, former owner and operator of the timegate.
Within a year of their arrival, Group Green members change the face of Pliocene Europe. When Felice learns that human women serve as brood mares for the Tanu, she vows to steal a golden torc and “take” the entire Tanu race. The shock of time travel revives Elizabeth’s metafunctions. As the only non-torced operant human in Europe, she possesses a unique opportunity to aid humanity. Aiken, his silver torc burned out by his newly released metafunctions, covets the Tanu throne. Stein, torced with gray, seeks vengeance on the Tanu king who has betrayed him. Brian completes a study that predicts the Tanu’s doom if they continue their excessive reliance on humans. Amerie, Richard, and Claude, aided by Felice, escape to join Madame Guderian’s Lowlives, who aim to free humanity from the Tanu yoke.
When the now-insane Felice, directed by Stein, blasts the Gibraltar isthmus by mindpower alone, the resulting flooding of the empty Mediterranean basin annihilates more than 100,000 Tanu, Firvulag, and humans gathered for their annual ritual war. In the Postdiluvium, Aiken becomes king of the Many-Colored Land. To kill Felice, he and his torced subjects link mentally with Marc Remillard, mastermind of the failed Metapsychic Rebellion of 2083. Unknown to most inhabitants of Pliocene Europe, Marc had overpowered the timegate guards and fled through it with a hundred of his chief rebels, in an incident expunged from official Tanu history.
After recovering from the metapsychic battle with Felice, Marc leaves his self-imposed exile in Pliocene Florida and sails with his rebels to France to prevent their children from building a timegate to the Milieu, which would alert authorities to the rebels’ whereabouts. To that end, Marc allies himself with the surviving Firvulag. Before the violent collapse of society that nearly obliterates sentient life in Pliocene Europe, Marc falls in love with Elizabeth and learns that to atone for the Metapsychic Rebellion, he must immigrate with her to the Duat galaxy and free its billions of inhabitants from the bondage of their torcs.
The timegate is completed. Those who wish to leave exile return to the Milieu, and Aiken steels himself to rebuild his society yet again.