James Follet’s Earthsearch

Earthsearch is a ten-part serial written for radio by the prolific science-fiction writer, James Follet about the fate of four surviving crew aboard a massive spaceship.

The story starts as Shana, Darv, Telson and Astra – good sci-fi names if ever there were any – are played a recording of the second-generation crew’s final moments (before the meteors struck). The Angels – two sentient, omnipotent pieces of AI – have a plan, though at first we don’t know what their intentions are. They certainly intend to make things easy for themselves. Since birth, they have fed and nurtured their human crew in such a way as to stunt any sexual development, and to prevent certain ‘social factors’ from arising. As such, all material depicting adults in a state of undress has been deleted from the ship’s library, including any educational materials, to the point that these 25 year olds, don’t know where babies come from.

Astra, Telson, Darv and Shana are twenty-five years old when we meet them at the beginning of the story, and have been brought up by nursery androids and two sentient, omnipotent Angel One played by Sonia Fraser and Angel Two played by Gordon Reid control all the automatic functions of the ship and have been repairing the damage caused by the meteors since it happened.

James Follet is a name you might not know but has so many serials and radio plays to his name, it verges on the ridiculous. I don’t know how Earthsearch compares to his other plays, because aside from the two episodes of Blake’s 7 he penned, I don’t think I’ve encountered any of his work before. All that is going to change because Earthsearch had me gripped.

Starring Sean Arnold, Amanda Murray, Haydn Wood, Kathryn Hurlbutt star as the crew of the starship Challenger, who are the third generation to be born on the ship, after their parents and the rest of the second generation crew were wiped out by a freak meteor storm, just as they were about to return home following the success of their mission – to survey the planets of a galaxy and find one comparable to Earth, for future colonization. It’s a solid premise, and the inclusion of the Angels is a masterstroke by James Follet.

When this was first broadcast in January – March 1981, Follet would – like any decent writer of science fiction – seek to play on the somewhat ‘irrational’ fears many in the audience would have had toward automation integrated into our lives and machines taking over functions and duties, hitherto reserved for humans. The AI characters as I call them – the Angels – resonate deeper today, as we begin to live with the unregulated taking over of AI and the problems the burgeoning technology has already created.

This is a horror story in many ways, showing what happens if AI is allowed to run rampant, to be allowed to make decisions that are seldom questioned, and shows how cold and ‘self serving’ – for want of a better term – the intelligent software can be. That two bits of tech decided to stunt the growth of the humans in their care, out of nothing more than expediency, is a terrifying concept. It could be seen as a cautionary tale of what happens when humans put too much faith in their own technology.

Darv begins to suspect things aren’t right pretty early on, and when he and Astra find a recording made by the long-deceased ship’s captain showing their mission of finding another Earth-like planet was a success, he is almost convinced the Angels are up to something. The AI then wipes Astra’s memory of the recording while she sleeps, while Angel 1 gives Darv enough nightmares to keep him frightened and cowed for several days.

The Angels want the crew of the Challenger to return home, but why? As the ten part series plays out, The Angels’ true motivations become clear, while the crew try to figure out why they’ve only been gone a hundred and fifteen years yet over three million years have passed on Earth, in which time the Earth has vacated it’s position around our sun and gone….somewhere.

On the course of the journey to find the Earth, Astra, Telson, Shana and Darv encounter a cult-like society of feral humans, First Footstep City on the moon and – the old sci-fi standby – the female led society, which is made more interesting by our child-like twenty-somethings. Throughout their trials and adventures, Darv, tries to recall just what was on that recording he saw, and where he found it.

I have listened to all ten episodes, over the course of three sittings, and I was thoroughly gripped throughout. There are some very creepy, quite original ideas in here, but the way they are played in the drama is very underplayed, imperceptible even. There’s a slightly traditional feel to this serial as well, it’s not a million miles away in style and stature to Charles Chilton’s sci-fi serials (see Space Force review). But Follet was a modern writer, so all those sci-fi standards are put through the ‘Follet filter’ and come out stranger and more relevant.

There is a second series, Earthsearch II, but the first series has a pretty conclusive ending – a satisfying ending – so where the story goes in the second series, I can’t even begin to guess. But I will find out. And I am sufficiently intrigued by James Follet’s prodigious output for radio to explore more of his work. Something to look forward to!

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