Paradyzja

"Paradyzja" (English: "Paradise, the World in Orbit") is a 1984 science fiction novel by Janusz A. Zajdel.

It is a dystopian novel similar to George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The space colonies are more or less federated with the Earth. Everywhere human rights are observed and respected, but Paradise has not been verified for sure. The main hero, Rinah Devi, is sent from Earth to Paradise to research this and also the tragical death of some Terran sent ten years before to Paradise.

Plot

Paradyzja (from paradise) is the story about the human colony in space station orbiting around a distant and mineral rich star system. The colony is controlled by totalitarian regime. All human activity is tracked by ellectronic devices. It had been primarily devised as a ring, in which the gravity force is simulated by the centrifugal force exerting upon all object inside a ring tube in the direction opposite to the centre of the ring. This space station was build accidentally. The expedition had to site on the planet Tartar in order to live there and exploit the natural goods. But general Cortazar, the leader of settlers, decided that Tartar is not suitable for settling because of lack of good conditions for living, so the living place must be built as a space station on the Tartar's orbit.

Living rooms are made of transparent material and to get to some of them you would have to pass through other living rooms. There are also not allowed personal watches; the only clocks are those in living rooms. First impression made on him is that all people strictly adhere to the regime law, but then he discovered that people devised various ways to work around the system. One of them is "the only language of truth" - Koalang, an artificial poetic language invented by the people of Paradise to cheat the electronic eavesdropping system.

The government and the safety service is trying to suppress every possible knowledge of physics, which could lead to verify if the statements about what Paradise is, explained to Paradisians, are true. That's why every research in physics are blocked, especially every research about Coriolis force. The main hero discovered this, when he was trying to verify if the forces really differ on every floor: all things that would be used to make such an experiment (even such as a spring from his ballpen) have been taken from him by the customs officers and there are no other things for that accessible. Then he discovers that minutes on clocks in living rooms are not equal to each other. Finally, he discovers that Paradise is not a ring-tube space station, but a train of buildings lying on the surface of Tartar planet. In addition, Tartar is a planet quite well suitable for settlement and the governing force build for itself also some buildings and gardens, keeping the majority of settlers in the fictional Paradise.