From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, this is the fourth instalment in the visionary novel cycle ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’.

'The Making of the Representative for Planet 8' is the fourth volume in Doris Lessing's celebrated space fiction series, 'Canopus in Argos: Archives'. In this interlinked quintet of novels, she creates a new, extraordinary cosmos where the fate of the Earth is influenced by the rivalries and interactions of three powerful galactic empires, Canopus, Sirius and their enemy, Puttiora. Blending myth, fable and allegory, Doris Lessing's astonishing visionary creation both reflects and redefines the history of our own world from its earliest beginnings to an inevitable, tragic self-destruction.

'The Making of the Representative for Planet 8' tells the story of the inhabitants of a remote outpost of the Canopean empire. Harmonious, serene and blessed with a tropical climate, the planet's future is threatened by an incipient Ice Age. As the first snowflakes begin to fall and the struggle for survival begins, Doeg, a trusted representative reporting to the leaders of Canopus, begins to record the downfall of his race.

'The Making of the Representative for Planet 8' has been made into an opera by Philip Glass.

"Doris Lessing's descriptions of the landscape are superb: the accounts of the coldness are spectacular. It is hard not to see in this ice age and in the hopes held out and then betrayed, a metaphor of our own times."
HILARY BAILEY, 'Guardian'

"The extraordinary way in which Planet 8 is transmogrified from a happy world bathed in sunshine to the site of the New Ice Age came over as if set down in a Bible. The building of the huge black wall, the crime and fighting as glaciers and snow spread, all combine in sweep and detail to form an unforgettable picture."
MARTYN GOFF, 'Daily Telegraph'

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, this is the fourth instalment in the visionary novel cycle ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’.

The handsome, intelligent people of Planet 8 of the Canopean Empire know only an idyllic existence on their bountiful planet, its weather consistently nurturing, never harsh. They live long, purposeful, untroubled lives.

Then one day The Ice begins, and ice and snow cover the planet’s surface. Crops and animals die off, and the people must learn to live with this new desolation. Their only hope is that, as they have been promised, they will be taken from Planet 8 to a new world. But when the Canopean ambassador, Johor, finally arrives, he has devastating news: they will die along with their planet. Slowly they come to understand that their salvation may lie in the creation of one Representative who can save what is most essential to them.

Lessing has written a frightening and, finally, hopeful book, a profound and thought-provoking contribution to the science-fiction genre the novel generally.