. . .the basic story of the series . . .[]
It is 200 years in the future. Most of Earth has become uninhabitable and the majority of it's human population has been forced to live in space stations scattered throughout the solar system. Once considered the salvation of humankind, the Stations, as they are commonly known, have become the source of an illness that is quietly and steadily spreading among the populace. Known as the Syndrome, it is affecting children born into the sterile environments of the Stations. It is believed to be caused by “an absence of Earth,” meaning a lack of germs and viruses and bacteria which our bodies learn to fight and adapt to as we grow. No child contracting the Syndrome has ever lived beyond the age of 8.
Devon Adair, the daughter of a wealthy family involved in the construction of the stations, gives birth to a son who is stricken with the Syndrome. Determined to save her son, Ulysses, she uses her personal fortune to organize and equip an expedition to a distant planet she believes will offer the chance for a cure to the disease. Known only asd G889, the Earthlike planet is one of three being studied by the Council, the ruling body of the stations.
The Eden Project consists of two ships. The smaller, faster ship will take the Eden Advance Team of colonists ahead to build a colony site and a hospital on G889 in anticipation of the arrival of the larger ship carrying 200 Syndrome affected families. The colony ship is expected to reach G889 two years after the Eden Advance team.
Along with the 200 families with Syndrome children, Devon Adair prepares to embark on a 22/24 year voyage to the planet known only as G889. It is an Earth-like planet 22 light years away where it is hoped the ailing children will have a chance to live.
Initially, the Council, deceives Adair into thinking they are helping her with her plans. In fact, the Council is determined to find a way to either take control of the expedition, or to stop it if they cannot. They give false information to Adair and her planning team about the planet, and they delay the project time and again. When it becomes apparent that Adair is determined to keep control of the project and to defy the Council’s orders at every turn, the ruling body resorts to desperate measures to stop her.
On the eve of the project’s planned launch, Adair impatiently awaits the Council’s final clearance to embark. They stall, but in doing so they allow enough time for Eden Project’s co-leader, Broderick O’Neill, to discover a recorded message meant to be broadcast the day of the launch. It is a pre-recorded news report stating the Eden Project met with disaster at departure when the ship exploded and killed everyone aboard.
Alarmed at seeing the “news” item, Adair orders her crew to launch immediately without waiting for final clearance. As the ships slowly slip away from their berths, the Operations crew searches the smaller ship and finds explosives aboard. A bomb is jettisoned and explodes harmlessly away from the ships. O’Neill remarks that the Council is probably broadcasting the phony news report as he speaks.
The Eden Project is away, but the general populace of the Stations will believe they are all dead. Twenty-two years later, the smaller advance ship arrives at G889 and the passengers and crew are awakened from cold sleep to prepare to disembark. A communications dish is successfully launched and sent to the site on the planet where the new colony will be built, but when the cargo pods, containing all the equipment needed to build the colony, cannot be jettisoned, the advance ship is pulled into the planet’s atmosphere along with them. The ship’s crew and the advance team crash land on the planet in three widely dispersed escape pods. As the ship falls to the ground, the cargo containers are shaken loose and fall to earth independently of the ship.
With it’s equipment lost or destroyed, the survivors of the expedition, colonists and ship’s crew alike, must make their way overland to the site of the proposed colony. Now thousands of kilometers away, they must reach the communications dish where the colony ship will begin to disembark the Syndrome families two years later. For the colonists, they must reach the site and begin building their futures on the planet; for the ship’s crew they must reach the site in order to return home to the stations on the larger ship’s return voyage. Internal conflicts begin almost immediately, and along the way the survivors discover they are not alone on the planet, and that the Council has deceived them in many ways.