Voyage from Yesteryear

Voyage from Yesteryear is a 1982 science fiction novel by the author James P. Hogan. It explores themes of anarchism and the appropriateness of certain social values in the context of high-technology. The inspiration for the novel was the contention that the ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland had no immediate practical solution, and could only be solved if the children of one generation were somehow separated from their parents, and hence did not learn any of their prejudices.

In the early 21st century an automated space probe, the Kuan-Yin, is sent from Earth to find habitable exoplanets. The Kuan-Yin is equipped with data banks storing the DNA sequences of several hundred humans, as well as equipment and robots which can grow viable embryos and raise children from this data, allowing embryo space colonization of a suitable planet. After the probe is launched a major global war breaks out and the survivors who rebuild civilization eventually receive a message from Alpha centauri, informing them that an Earth-like planet, dubbed Chiron, has been found, and the Kuan-Yin has begun raising human children.

On Earth, the old international hostilities which led to war are still evident, and so the three major power blocs - North America, Asia, and Europe - each send a starship to Alpha centauri to reclaim the colony there. The starship from North America, the Mayflower II, arrives first, however its attempts to open a political dialogue with the inhabitants of Chiron fails when it becomes apparent that the Chironians have no government. Furthermore they do not use money as a means of exchange, since the availability of power from fusion reactors, and cheap automated labour has made the rationing of material resources unnecessary.

The government of the Mayflower II attempts to exert control over the Chironians by enforcing laws and a capitalist financial system upon them - however they soon find that the Chironians simply refuse to cooperate, and many of the crew from the Mayflower II are abandoning their jobs and adopting Chironian lifestyles. Amid widespread speculation that a violent conflict will soon break out, some of the people who arrived on the Mayflower II realise that the Chironians do not intend to harm the majority of the ship's occupants, but rather to separate them from the small number who present a real threat.

Eventually a military coup is staged aboard the Mayflower II, and the general who led the coup launches the Mayflower II's battle module, an independently functioning heavily-armed spaceship, and threatens to attack the Chironian population unless they submit to his rule. He is killed when a direct attack with a high-energy particle-beam weapon destroys the battle module. The remaining members of the Mayflower II's government vote to dissolve their government and absorb peacefully into Chironian society.