Sometimes you really shouldn't cross that line
Cover: Jay Johnstone
All That Is in the Earth is the new novella from Andrew Knighton, a british author who has many, many books under other people’s names and is still finding his niche in terms of publishing under his own name.
This novella is published by Luna Press. Luna is one of the mainstays of British indie publishing, alongside Wizard’s Tower Press, NewCon Press and Blackshuck Books. This is Luna’s 24th (that’s right) novella. Both they and NewCon have published long standing series of novellas of which each entry is worth your time. They don’t get as much recognition as some of their US counterparts but the quality and consistency is worth your investigation.
Knighton’s novella is largely set on the planet of Abaddon, a quarantined colony where some catastrophe struck and no one survived. At least that’s what Clifford believes before he ends up there when the station he’s on is attacked and destroyed.
Abaddon’s fate has not simply attracted a deadly quarantine but also every corporate and war mongering interest in Knighton’s world and each of them are looking to find a way to profit from what happened even if no one is quite sure what happened or why.
Clifford is a scientist, specifically a biologist. He is not a gun slinging soldier or a genius or a hero but a quietly competent scientist who doesn’t really understand the politics of his own people’s interest in the planet let alone those of other polities.
This leads to a set of intriguing encounters as Clifford discovers each and every one of his assumptions about Abaddon is wrong.
It has been said that with a novella you get to ask maybe one, sometimes two, questions – the short form nature of the structure meaning that there’s little time for more, at least if you want to present these central ideas well. Knighton is, I think, most interested in asking two questions – the first being what it means to survive disaster and the second being about what it takes to turn strangers into community.
Clifford is a man without resources or relevant skills when he arrives on Abaddon. He immediately ends up with people who have both and his biggest challenge is understanding them and determining how he gives back.
What particularly struck me is that Knighton shows us a handful of different ways of organising societies and communities and the pros and cons are touched on lightly and shown through the values of each of the different people from those backgrounds as Clifford comes across them. Yet within that Knighton makes the case that people remain people; that there’s some kind of goodness in us that, if given the chance, transcends the social values we’re fed from birth.
I’m not sure I agree with that – I think the programming we receive from birth is largely invisible to us and comes in flavours that are as fundamental as what kind of textures and noises and smells we think are acceptable and which provoke basic revulsion but nevertheless his choice in presenting the world this way allows him to pick at the question of what it takes to step past the barriers we each erect to keep those not like us out.
Knighton is clear that those barriers are sometimes raised for the sake of safety but only as much as those barriers are also raised arbitrarily based on originating conditions we can no longer identify or because to have different ones would threaten the interests at the centre of our societies.
Given Abaddon is a place where you’re absolutely going to die, the stakes are such that they can puncture those barriers and allow people to cross between each other’s ways of life in the name of survival. It’s deftly done – there is no growth of a happy family or community around Clifford and those he meets.
People don’t live long on Abaddon through no fault of their own and where that does help them breach their preconceptions about one another, no one survives long enough to grow something more than that. As a metaphor for how external pressure can provoke unexpected cooperation but also stymie it as well, Abaddon works really well.
Clifford’s role in much of this is as observer and babe in arms learning his first steps while hoping not to fall down a hole and die. It largely works. Clifford’s own journey is a little undercooked – perhaps my own preference here and even a measure of the success of the story because I wanted more than what I got. Specifically Clifford’s actual skill as a biologist is taken halfway towards a conclusion but then we finish our time with him. It’s frustrating but I concede that this thread of the story isn’t really the point of Clifford’s stay on Abaddon.
All That is in the Earth is about having one’s eyes opened to others, to the worlds they inhabit and about the questions vis a vis ourselves that arise when we realise that other people are as real and fragile as us.
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Highlights:
- Lots of different types of community on stage
- Alien fauna and flora
- a thoughtful questioning of what makes for strangers and friendship
References: Knighton, Andrew, All That is in the Earth. [Luna Press, 2026].
