The artificial intelligences serving the Belter colonies coped with the plague from space by creating quarantined societies based on familiar literary sources. In the book, the solar-sail ship Argo sails across the Black Sea of Space and through the Wandering Rocks of the Asteroid Belt to challenge the Earthborn Men on the Golden Ram ship, recently returned from Deep Space. Awakened from stasis, the surviving starship explorers begin the task of rebuilding the solar system. They discover an all-robot civilization in the orbit of Jupiter, a terraformed Mars ruled by an evil power, and finally begin the process of reviving Earth.
The names of the Earthborn Men are the second most common names in their homelands: Wang is the second most common name in China, Hassan the second-most common in the Arab World, Davis in North America, Federova in Russia, and Sanchez in South America. They represent the beautiful and diverse sizes and colors of the human species. Many of Swift’s works are inspired by the ancient epics—for instance, The Topless Towers by The Iliad and The Sirens’ Voices by the Odyssey. The Earthborn Men is inspired by the Voyage of Argo, written by Apollonius Rhodius in the Third Century. The book began as a short story, gradually accreted more stories and finally an entire third part in which sailing ships ply the Seas of Mars.