The Wall Around Eden
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 First edition cover | |
| Author | Joan Slonczewski |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Nicholas Jainschigg[1] |
| Language | English |
| Genre | |
| Publisher | William Morrow |
Publication date | September 1989 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Hardback |
| Pages | 288 |
| ISBN | 978-1-55710-030-6 |
The Wall Around Eden is a 1989 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American microbiologist and science fiction writer Joan Slonczewski. It was first published in the United States in September 1989 by William Morrow and Company, and in the United Kingdom by The Women's Press in March 1991. It was translated into Italian and published by Editrice Nord as Le mura dell'Eden in May 1991.[2]
The entry for Slonczewski in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction states that The Wall Around Eden includes alien keeps and hive minds, but central to the story is an "unassuming but deeply felt concern with Ecology as interwoven with human Religion".[3][capitals in the source]
A global nuclear war has left Earth uninhabitable, except for a handful of settlements around the planet. These communities have been protected from the nuclear fallout by airwalls erected by aliens using force fields. Within each enclave stands a Pylon, a six-sided pyramid from which small floating spheres observe the inhabitants. A small airwall also surrounds the Pylon for protection.
Isabel is a teenager living in Gwynwood, Pennsylvania, one of the few walled settlements across the world. Its inhabitants are mostly Quakers who accept the aliens as saviors, and call the mysterious floating eyes, "angelbees". But Isabel questions the visitors' motives and is determined to investigate further. She learns that the angelbees see in infrared, and after acquiring a scale one of the angelbees had shed, Isabel discovers that by placing it over her eyes, she can also see in infrared and becomes paired with this angelbee. Using her angelbee, Isabel is able to penetrate the Pylon's force field and finds herself in a hypersphere with forests full of birds and animals, many long extinct on Earth. There, Isabel learns that in addition to angelbees, there are also goatsnakes and keepers, all of which are part of an alien hive mind in orbit around Earth.
