The story

Social order

Why they are here

The 24 are astronauts, chosen from many countries and crafts and trained by NASA for the Human Habitation Project. They were set down with nothing, on purpose, to answer one question: starting from bare hands, how long does it take people to launch their first manned rocket into space? What they do not know is that there are two teams and two planets. The first planet to make its launch wins.

How decisions are made

• The council is all 24, one voice each. It meets in the long house on the common ground every seventh evening.
• Adam chairs, until his death in year 33. The chair is voted on again every Landing Day. A decision needs two thirds.
• Each person holds a charge (see the roster). On the safety of their own charge, their word is final, even over the chair.
• Disputes are heard by three people drawn by lot, and from year 5 every judgment is written down.
• As the numbers grow, each settlement settles its own daily matters and the council of everyone still meets at the centre. About year 34, with some 300 people and nobody voted into Adam's chair, it becomes a council of chosen speakers: the law is printed, and judges are drawn by lot.

The Landing Rules

1. Nobody works alone at anything that can kill: the sea, the mine, the furnace, the boiler.
2. Nothing is built that is not written in the Record, and every accident is written too.
3. No skill lives in one head. Everyone learns a second craft and teaches their own.
4. Food, fuel, tools and metal are held in common. Clothes, a bed and one chest are your own.
5. The dirty jobs rotate: charcoal, latrines, the mine, the night fire watch.
6. Pairing is a free choice, told to the council. Either one may end it. Nobody is owed a partner.
7. Anything marked ⚠ needs two trained people and the say-so of whoever holds that charge.
8. One island, one people. There are no borders: anyone may live, work and travel anywhere. There is no religion.

About year 39 the council changes Rule 4: what a household makes beyond its share of the common work is its own, to keep, give or exchange. Barter and the market day follow from it.

Unwritten principles

These are not rules of the council. They are how the settlers live.

• There is no marriage. A man and a woman pair by choice, and the pairing lasts as long as both want it.
• While two people are together, they are usually with nobody else. One partner for life and several over the years are both ordinary; neither is praised or blamed.
• Over the years most people have children with more than one partner. On average a man of the landing has children with about two women of his own generation, and later in life with one or two grown women of the next.
• Nobody stays alone.
• There is jealousy, and there are quarrels over it. There is no violence: no rape and no murder.
• The register of births and family lines records both parents of every child, so that everyone knows who is kin to whom.

Two settlements and the common ground

In the first year the 24 divide into two mixed groups of twelve and build two settlements about a mile apart. Halfway between them is the common ground, with the evening fire where everyone gathers after work, and beside it the work ground, where the kilns, the forge and later the workshops stand, away from both sets of houses. The long house is the first building on the common ground. It becomes the common store, then, much later, the settlement office and the records office. The bank that grows out of it belongs to Book 2.

Who does what in the first year

The seven threads

The index sorts every achievement into one of seven threads that run side by side through all fifteen phases.

Two camps

• The Field — Omar, Sofia, Grace, Kofi, Tane: food and safety first. "You cannot eat iron."
• The Forge — Zoe, Nadia, Jonas, Viktor, Rohan: build faster, the machines will feed us.
• Adam stands between them. Most of the council's hard votes are this argument in a new form.
• The two camps are not the two settlements. People of both live in both, so that neither settlement becomes a side.

Story beats

These were re-dated on 2026-11-11 to the 50-year calendar. In the later beats the founders are in their fifties, sixties and seventies; how the work is shared with their children and grandchildren is still to be written, with the cast of the second generation.

Children and numbers

The first birth is in month 10. The couples do not space their children: a woman has a child about every two years. By year 15 there are about eighty children and no grown ones, and small children take about a third of the adults' working time. These are the years when almost every hand is needed just to live, and they are why the plough, the horses and water power matter so much.

The first grandchildren of the landing come from about year 19. There are about 220 people in year 30, about 440 in year 40 and about 830 in year 50, in several settlements with no borders between them. Eleven of the 24 who landed are alive at the end of year 50, aged 70 to 76. The count is in review/population.js.

Who dies, and when

Deaths are shown honestly and told plainly, a few lines each. There is no violence, and nobody takes their own life. Burial is plain: the burial ground, a stone, and the entry in the register (03.44, 07.06).

By year 50 about fifty people lie in the burial grounds, out of about 875 who have lived on the island: thirteen of the 24 who landed, about twenty-five small children, and about eleven grown people born on the island. The story tells eighteen of them. The rest are in the register.

Alive at the end of year 50: Zoe, Farah, Sofia, Jonas, Chloe, Imani, Hiro, Preet, Kofi, Rohan and Ulani, aged 70 to 76.

Of the people born on the island, the story tells five:

Three dangers kill nobody: the trip hammer takes two of Bjorn's fingers in year 16, the boiler of year 35 splits a seam under its water test with nobody near, and Omar lives through the first operation in year 32. The rules work.

Six people lose their first partner in the middle of life: Tane (year 8), Ulani (21), Imani (27), Kofi (29), Zoe (33) and Sofia (38). Nobody stays alone, so each pairs again. With whom is still to be written, with the cast of the second generation.

Choices: decided and still open

1. Deaths. Decided: they are shown honestly. Two of the 24 die early, where it teaches the most, eleven more die of illness or of age, and about one child in thirty is lost (see "Who dies, and when").
2. Where the 24 came from, and why they arrive with nothing. Decided: the Human Habitation Project and its test on two planets (see "Why they are here").
3. Is Zoe the right first partner for Adam, or should the leader be matched differently? Still open.
4. Should anyone stay alone? Decided: nobody does.
5. Medicine. Decided: penicillin stays in Book 1, as its last great step in year 49.
6. The second and third generations. Still open: which of the children and grandchildren are named, and who leads the later phases beside the founders, and who has children with whom after the first pairings. Also open: who the six who lose their first partner pair with next, and who leads the Society thread after year 33 and the Food thread after year 38.