Imagine an unknown species of extraterrestrials—with technology so advanced that they have turned their whole planet into a lightning-fast spaceship—invading the solar system and barreling straight toward Earth. Shane Greenburg’s new SF thriller Fugitive Planet shows how terrifying that prospect would be—especially for the extraterrestrials.
The problem is that the Babeks, an alien race fleeing their own unstable sun for ours, have been watching too much Earth TV on their long journey. Those broadcasts depict a people prone to violence, war, and cruelty to animals. “I was trying to capture how they would feel seeing this alien race—us—that is, in their eyes, essentially cannibalistic,” says Greenburg, a professor of environmental science at Temple University and a landscape architect and city planner for the town of Aravada, Colorado.
By viewing this confrontation through the other end of the telescope, Fugitive Planet takes the classic SF scenario of a cosmic clash of civilizations and gives it a fresh twist—one that treats both sides with empathy.
Greenburg has been empathizing with extraterrestrials all his life. “I spent a lot of time drawing aliens starting when I was around 10 years old,” he recalls. “Like every kid, I wanted to fly, so I came up with plantlike birds that use sunlight for energy.”
Forty years later these became the Babeks, six-eyed creatures as tall as a man that sink tendrils from their toes into the soil to absorb water and minerals and power up by spreading their wings to light. They delight in swooping through tunnels and use their color-shifting feathers to communicate—neck plumage turning bright orange indicates annoyance, for example—which makes their Council debates a riot of flashing hues.
“Communicating through light and color came from thinking about evolution,” says Greenburg. “Being plants, Babeks didn’t need big lungs for oxygen—and if they didn’t have big lungs, they wouldn’t evolve to use sound to communicate.”
That kind of meticulously detailed worldbuilding pervades Fugitive Planet. The story is framed by an ancient journal describing solar storms that scorched planet Babek and evaporated its oceans. Modern-day Babeks live in caves beneath a surface of charred cities and a literally glacial atmosphere that froze solid as the planet cruised through frigid interstellar space, driven by thousands of thrusters powered by nuclear fusion. As it nears the star Boaba—our sun—glaciers melt and geysers of gas erupt.
“It was very intricate,” Greenburg recalls of his deep dive into extreme planetary science. “Part of the fun was doing the research—looking at scientific journals, encyclopedias, and college texts.” Geophysics and astrophysics thus emerge as main aspects of the novel’s drama.
There’s also cross-cultural drama. “Babek personalities are based on my young nephews and nieces,” chuckles Greenburg. “The species is very innocent, even childlike, but with the intelligence of adults.” That naiveté makes them judge human society harshly. Their last conflict ended eons ago, so “they don’t grasp the mentality of violence and war—it shocks their system.”
That dilemma sets off a political struggle among the Babek. One faction, led by Pamar, the mayor of the Babek capital of Kwawba, and his son, Weka, who has learned English, wants to coexist peacefully with earthlings, keeping a wary distance in an orbit out near Mars.
The other, led by Council member Chalp, proposes genocidal alternatives: a close flyby to roil Earth’s gravitational field or seeding Earth with microscopic “GARC”—gene-altering robotic cells—that would unleash a deadly plague. “They perceive us as a threat and also worry they might be corrupted and become like us,” Greenburg explains.
Intrigue ensues along with a gripping battle for control of the Babek’s colossal technological resources that will decide Earth’s fate—one that Earth’s inhabitants are largely unaware of.
The novel’s human perspective belongs to Matt Olsen, a NASA astronomer at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea observatory. He and his colleagues initially take Babek for an asteroid, but they grow alarmed as its unnatural speed and ominous course adjustments betray a guiding intelligence. They reckon the planet will come close enough to ravage us with its gravity, causing 1,000-foot tidal waves and yanking Earth out of its orbit. Then, looking through his telescope at the pattern of the thrusters’ firings, Matt discerns a puzzling message.
The looming disaster furnishes another of the book’s riveting set-piece cataclysms, tracing the course of doomsday in fascinating scientific detail. It also frames a cunning mystery yarn as Matt, with nothing but enigmatic data and speculative logic, tries to reason his way into the aliens’ minds and intentions—a task aided by his experiences as a gay man.
Matt, who grew up in a conservative community and was given conversion therapy, has “more perspective on the darker side of humanity,” explains Greenburg. “As a member of a minority group who has gone through trauma and ostracism, he relates to the aliens and the anxieties they might feel in encountering humans.”
Fugitive Planet took Greenburg over three years to write. “I went through at least 50 drafts,” he recalls. “A lot of it was relearning English. I had written mostly scientific stuff, and switching over to fiction was challenging. One comment I got on the first draft was, ‘You sound like you’re writing a bullet point.’ ”
All those drafts paid off in what Kirkus Reviews lauds as an “entertaining futuristic tale with a thoroughly established, cool alien species.” Greenburg manages to turn bare science into grand spectacle in evocative prose that reaches for the sublime:
He watched as the shadow of Earth crossed the rogue planet’s surface turning a portion of the planet a dark red as the refracted light from Earth’s atmosphere colored the surface. As the planet passed, for a split second the winds stopped, and all was still…he could clearly see the ancient cities, mountain ranges, thrusters, and frozen oceans. He wished he could make this moment in time stop forever.
A second book in the Babek series, Terraform, is on the way, Greenburg promises. “I’m delving into the science of terraforming, from restoring the atmosphere to reviving species, rebuilding cities, and tweaking Babek’s new orbit around the sun.” He’ll also deal with the chaos and devastation visited on humans by the aliens’ arrival.
Greenburg sees those themes of confronting apocalyptic change as very relevant to our real-life concerns about climate change and other sustainability issues. “The Babeks ignored warnings that their sun was unstable until it was too late,” he says. “We need to avoid complacency. Something will happen, something will break, and life can turn on a dime.”
Will Green is a writer in New York