Shipwreck: A Cosmic Crusoe

In Shipwreck (1975) by Charles Logan (1930), an explosion destroys an interstellar generation ship sent to colonize one of the planets in the Capella star system, marooning its sole survivor, the shuttle pilot Tansis. There can be no effective rescue: any relief ship would require at least 65 years to reach him, longer than his remaining lifetime.

Our hero initially perceives his marooning as of no particular hardship, at least from the point of view of physical comfort, in that he has managed to rescue one of the landing craft from the destroyed colony ship and has used it to escape to the planet’s surface. The craft, in the beginning, provides all of the necessary materials for life support and, indeed, a relatively comfortable lifestyle, complete with coffee, food, music, and movies, among other luxuries.

David Bergen’s terrific book cover art tells you everything you need to know about the story.

The landing craft also has a relatively large fuel supply, allowing Tansis to travel at will around the planet, at least for a while.

His rescue of four colleagues from the doomed colony ship turns out to be a futile gesture, and the novel opens with Tansis burying them on the planet, all having died of radiation sickness during the destruction of the colony ship’s nuclear engines, a fate he avoided due to his presence in a scout ship at the time of the explosion. With bodily comforts provided for, one of his initial challenges is simply being alone. Especially after having known no other life than the cramped and crowded colony ship, where it was difficult to be alone.

He goes through periods of boredom, depression, and sadness, and tries to alleviate these emotions through his initial exploration of the planet, out of simple interest and curiosity, but also with the goal of finding other, hopefully intelligent life, which he might be able to communicate.

A Unique Ecology

Having never lived on the surface of a planet, Tansis's initial forays into the world outside the landing craft are of mixed success. The most striking feature of the environment is the vegetation, which seems to consist of a single species of ribbon-like plant. This plant forms a tightly woven carpet over much of the ground in temperate zones, and also twists itself into trunks with a spray of ribbons at the top to form forests of vaguely tree-like structures.

In the tropics, this strange woven carpet becomes hundreds of feet thick, as Tansis learns in a near disaster, whereas in desert regions, the strange vegetable is limited to winding green-domed “canals” that have a hollow interior with a vaulted cathedral-like roof. Entering one such structure provides Tansis with one of the few moments of reverence for the alien planet.

At first, the strange vegetal landscape seems bereft of animal life, large or small. However, in the streams, rivers, and sea, Tansis identifies various forms of aquatic life, plant and animal, all the way up to fairly large seal-like creatures, which he briefly encounters early on in the story, and which seem to watch him before disappearing into the depths.

Survivalist

Apart from his struggles in the tropics, Tansis is faced with his first truly existential crisis when the computer on the landing craft informs him that the fuel reserve is only sufficient to return to orbit and the colony ship, and will not let him investigate the planet further, even though the colony ship has been destroyed.

There are very few editions in any language of Charles Logan’s only novel, which is a pity.

Worse than this, the computer subsequently informs him he has no more than 50 days before the landing craft will run out of fuel at current usage rates and automatically shut down. To compound this problem, the computer is specifically programmed to guard against lowly crew members such as Tansis, a mere scout pilot, from taking full control, as, of the nine colony ships previously sent to other stars, three suffered mutinies of their crews and were lost.

Shocked by the realization that the comfort of his womb-like cocoon could come to an abrupt end, leaving him facing the planet without the landing craft’s many and varied protections, and that the computer would also shut down, robbing him of its limited companionship and leaving him absolutely alone, he manages to manipulate the computer’s logic to convince it the colony ship is destroyed, and that he is the last remaining survivor, not an insurgent trying to take over the vessel.

Wanting to conserve energy for the life support systems, he can no longer jaunt around the planet, and is finally and truly marooning on an island in a temperate sea. Here, he works tirelessly to generate wind energy from a series of windmills attached to the landing craft. These, and solar panels, will give him sufficient energy for his simple needs until the age of 50, long enough, he thinks, for him to be able to work out further solutions to his energy problem.

He must also understand the potential consequences of the indigenous fauna and flora on the human body as, at some point soon, he will of necessity have to start breathing the planet’s air, something he has shunned doing, wearing his pressure suit continuously outside the landing craft.

Alien Eyes

On a circum-perambulation of the island, he experiences a vast dust storm, which later analysis reveals is a kind of spawning event by the planet-wide vegetation. The material seems to be some form of nucleic acid, prompting Tansis to hypothesize that the massive, likely planet-wide event may be how the single plant species maintains its genetic homogeneity and, thereby, its total domination of the land.

Tiny amounts of this plant material get into his suit and give him a pronounced allergic reaction, further heightening his acute hypochondria, and intensifying his anxiety at having to expose himself to the atmosphere. These fears, together with his loneliness, transmute into a form of mental collapse, and he starts imagining dead crew members, and particularly the colony-ship captain, haranguing him for not working hard enough to find the solution to the problems he faces.

At a guess, I would say that “naufragio” is Italian for “shipwreck.” (Ah, Google says spanish.Then why is this edition priced in lire?)

But once the spawning event ends, he finds he can once again move around outside without ill effect, and he finally takes off his helmet and breaths the planet’s air without any significant consequences, reassuring himself that, outside of the alien plant’s worldwide spawning season, he is able live unprotected on the surface of the planet.

His continuing loneliness inspire him to search for the seal-like animals in a sheltered bay on the island, convinced by his earlier interaction with them that they are intelligent beings. His belief is strengthened by his subsequent encounter; he is sure they are trying to communicate with him using their large eyes, through contraction and expansion of their pupils. Frustratingly, he has no way of responding. Indeed, he has no idea of how to respond.

On a later encounter with a large group of the creatures, he experiences a form of telepathic connection with them. He finds this both pleasant and disconcerting. He tries to communicate with them in this way, conveying through mental images his journey to the planet and to the island, but it is never clear whether the creatures understand him or not. Nonetheless, the sense of communion and of not being completely alone strengthens his mental resolve.

Disaster and Decline

The sudden failure of the algae tanks on the landing craft are a warning that all things ship-based must necessarily fail at some point. Tansis must use purified planetary air to breathe inside the craft and has to rely solely on chemically-treated local food sources for nutrition, making him more precariously dependent on the alien world around him.

During a trip to the top of the mountain in the center of the island to recover water in its crater lake for its sulfur content, he suffers a serious accident, badly breaking his arm.

His arm never fully recovers, and this impediment breaks the routine he has established to be able to stay alive. He falls behind and suffers a significant mental collapse, no longer being able to face the grinding drudgery of the daily tasks needed to provide himself with food. He sinks deeper and deeper into a hunger-fueled lassitude, losing his will to live.

There is a brief moment of light — if it can be called that — at the very end of the novel, when, on the edge of utter starvation, he drags himself to the edge of the bay, and there communes with a large number of the aquatic aliens. They, apparently aware of the approaching end of his life, convey a sense of strength and hope such that he is able, in the last moment of life, to put aside all his fears and regrets.

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

This ending seems bleak, at least on the surface.

Our cosmic Crusoe struggled with so much during his marooning on the planet, facing and solving both physical and mental challenges, and in some ways becoming an expert survivor, balancing on the fine tightrope of what his ship could provide, and what he could recover from the environment, all of which was undone by a moment of impetuousness.

However, perhaps we are left with a sliver of hope for Tansis for, as death approaches, he notes that the aliens gathered there with him on the alien shore “seemed to be full of an anticipation of something tremendous.”

Shipwreck is by turns an absorbing, gripping, sad, and insightful novel. The author crafts a strange, cleverly imagined planet and, later, balances the narrative on the fine edge between success and failure, such that it is difficult to put down the book for want of knowing how his fragile and flawed protagonist will battle through to the end. Tansis’s failings are those of all of us, making his battles great and small all the more poignant.

Having finished the book, I am left thinking about the story, wondering what I would have done in a similar situation. The science fiction writer Edmund Cooper called the book “a tour de force of considerable intensity,” and “an imaginative and haunting piece of work.” And he is right.

“The Martian” this is not, but it’s a book that records the human struggle to survive with honesty and compassion.