"Red Star, Winter Orbit" is a short story written by

William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his ear ...

and

Bruce Sterling Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the ''Mirrorshades'' anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre. Sterling's first ...

in the 1980s. It was first published in '' Omni'' in July 1983, and later collected in ''

Burning Chrome "Burning Chrome" is a science fiction short story by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, first published in '' Omni'' in July 1982. Gibson first read the story at a science fiction convention in Denver, Colorado in the autumn of 1981, to an ...

'', a 1986 anthology of Gibson's early short fiction, and in Sterling's 1986

cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberwa ...

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, or related fiction/non-fiction excerpts by different authors. There are also thematic and g ...

'' Mirrorshades''. The story is set in an

alternate future Time travel is a common theme in fiction, mainly since the late 19th century, and has been depicted in a variety of media, such as literature, television, and film. The concept of time travel by mechanical means was popularized in H. G. Wells' ...

where the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

controls most of the Earth's resources, especially oil. As a result of this the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

is no longer a dominant economic power on earth and the Soviets have won the

space race The Space Race (, ) was a 20th-century competition between the Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between t ...

. Science fiction critic

Takayuki Tatsumi is a Japanese scholar. He is a professor at Keio University, where he has taught literary theory and American literature since 1989. As an avid science fiction fan, he authored many books and essays on science fiction. He received Nihon SF Tais ...

regards the story as a descriptive account of "the failure of the dream of space exploration", reminiscent of

J. G. Ballard James Graham Ballard (15 November 193019 April 2009) was an English novelist and short-story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations between human psychology, technology, s ...

's "inner space/outer space" motif. Gibson scholar Tatiani Rapatzikou commented that the motif of the

space station A space station (or orbital station) is a spacecraft which remains orbital spaceflight, in orbit and human spaceflight, hosts humans for extended periods of time. It therefore is an artificial satellite featuring space habitat (facility), habitat ...

was used by the authors as a "symbol of the tension and uneasiness the characters or readers experience every time they deal with the artificiality of their technological world".

Plot summary

The story takes place on the Soviet

''Kosmograd'' ("Cosmic City"), which consists of a number of

Salyut The ''Salyut'' programme (, , meaning "salute" or "fireworks") was the first space station programme, undertaken by the Soviet Union. It involved a series of four crewed scientific research space stations and two crewed military reconnaissa ...

s linked together. The station has both civilian and military roles; the military portion is a base for the operation for two large

particle beam weapon A particle-beam weapon uses a high-energy beam of atomic or subatomic particles to damage the target by disrupting its atomic and/or molecular structure. A particle-beam weapon is a type of space-based directed-energy weapon, which directs fo ...

s for shooting down

ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range (aeronautics), range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more Thermonuclear weapon, thermonuclear warheads). Conven ...

s. The civilian side, once a hub for

space exploration Space exploration is the process of utilizing astronomy and space technology to investigate outer space. While the exploration of space is currently carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, its physical exploration is conducted bo ...

, is now reduced to a maintenance role for the engineers running the station. Most of the story takes place in one of the Salyuts that has been set aside as the "Museum of the Soviet Triumph in Space." Its caretaker is

cosmonaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

Colonel Yuri Vasilevich Korolev, the first man to visit

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

. As the story opens, the military role is no longer required now that the United States has lost

superpower Superpower describes a sovereign state or supranational union that holds a dominant position characterized by the ability to Sphere of influence, exert influence and Power projection, project power on a global scale. This is done through the comb ...

status and the threat of ICBMs is gone. The government decides to stop crewing the station, but this would involve a loss of face as they would be abandoning their last occupied space presence. At first they plan on blaming the station's shutdown on the civilian crew's

black market A black market is a Secrecy, clandestine Market (economics), market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality, or is not compliant with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services who ...

activities, the minor trafficking in American media. When he hears of the shutdown, Korolev organizes a strike, demanding the charges be dropped. He is ignored, and the station rapidly deteriorates. On the ground, a

purge In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group undertaking such an ...

starts within the space establishment that removes most of the "old guard." The remaining administrators decide to put the station in a

decaying orbit Orbital decay is a gradual decrease of the distance between two orbiting bodies at their closest approach (the periapsis) over many orbital periods. These orbiting bodies can be a planet and its satellite, a star and any object orbiting it, or ...

, and blame the ''Kosmograd's '' demise on Korolev, the strike's leader. After 20 years in space, Korolev can no longer return to Earth and will make a convenient

scapegoat In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of a pair of kid goats that is released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities, while the other is sacrificed. The concept first appears in the Book of Leviticus, in which a goat is designate ...

. Korolev instead hatches a plan to use the remaining

Soyuz Soyuz is a transliteration of the Cyrillic text Союз (Russian language, Russian and Ukrainian language, Ukrainian, 'Union'). It can refer to any union, such as a trade union (''profsoyuz'') or the Soviet Union, Union of Soviet Socialist Republi ...

capsules to allow the crew to make their

defection In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state in exchange for allegiance to another, changing sides in a way which is considered illegitimate by the first state. More broadly, defection involves abandoning a person, ca ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

after landing in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. His attempts to interfere with the military side of the station fail and they prepare to fire on the defectors. One of the capsules returns and deliberately crashes into the weapon. The military crew is killed when their portion of the station is ripped open, and Korolev is locked in the civilian side when the doors automatically close. He is left alone in a decaying orbit. Some time later, Korolev awakens to find one of the hatches being knocked on from the outside. Thinking he is

dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensation (psychology), sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around ...

ing, he comes to his senses when the hatch is opened and several

Americans Americans are the Citizenship of the United States, citizens and United States nationality law, nationals of the United States, United States of America.; ; Law of the United States, U.S. federal law does not equate nationality with Race (hu ...

enter the station. Hearing it had been abandoned, they have decided to leave their squat on a solar-power

balloon A balloon is a flexible membrane bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. For special purposes, balloons can be filled with smoke, liquid water, granular media (e.g. sand, flour or rice), ...

and take over the station to form a new

colony A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule, which rules the territory and its indigenous peoples separated from the foreign rulers, the colonizer, and their ''metropole'' (or "mother country"). This separated rule was often orga ...

. The story ends with Korolev being asked to give a tour of the station for its new inhabitants.

References

External links

"Red Star, Winter Orbit"
at the William Gibson Aleph * {{William Gibson Cyberpunk short stories 1983 short stories Science fiction short stories Short stories by William Gibson Short stories by Bruce Sterling Works about astronauts Works originally published in Omni (magazine) Fiction about outer space Fictional space stations Works set in the Soviet Union Communism in fiction Cold War fiction Alternate history short stories