Earthfall (1995)
Earthfall is a 1995 fiction book written by Orson Scott Card.
After generations away, the Wetchik tribe is ready to make the voyage home to Earth and enlist help repairing the Oversoul, the ailing intelligence that has guided them for so long. The trip should be a homecoming. Instead it strains under an old wound: the bitter rivalry between the brothers Nafai and Elemak, whose feud has followed them across worlds and now threatens to break the mission apart before it can even begin. Part of Orson Scott Card's Homecoming saga, this volume turns a starfaring quest into a story about a family that will not forgive.
Quick answers
What is Earthfall about?
After generations away, the Wetchik tribe is ready to make the voyage home to Earth and enlist help repairing the Oversoul, the ailing intelligence that has guided them for so long. The trip should be a homecoming. Instead it strains under an old wound: the bitter rivalry between the brothers Nafai and Elemak, whose feud has followed them across worlds and now threatens to break the mission apart before it can even begin. Part of Orson Scott Card's Homecoming saga, this volume turns a starfaring quest into a story about a family that will not forgive.
When was Earthfall published?
Earthfall was published in 1995.
Who made Earthfall?
Earthfall was written by Orson Scott Card.
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A few thoughts on Earthfall
The engine here is a family feud carried into space, brother against brother on a mission larger than either of them. For that same blend of star travel and unhealed kinship, The Expanse sets warring factions against a journey none can finish alone, and 2001: A Space Odyssey supplies the failing guiding machine at the center of it all.
A voyage home steered by an intelligence that already knows the way
The Oversoul has guided the Wetchik tribe for generations, and this book turns their long-delayed trip back to Earth into a story about trusting a machine mind with everyone's survival. These picks share that same setup: a spaceborne mission where an artificial intelligence quietly steers events toward a destination the humans on board can only half understand.
A family feud that could sink the whole homecoming
Nafai and Elemak drag their old rivalry all the way to Earth, threatening a mission that depends on both of them cooperating. These picks share that same fault line: brothers or a whole royal house whose private grudge keeps spilling into public disaster, putting everything the family is supposed to protect at real risk.