The Twilight of Briareus
John Middleton Murry, Jr.
 Briareus Delta becomes a supernova only about 130 light-years from Earth. While admiring the aurora it produces, the comprehensive-school English teacher Calvin Johnson meets one of his students, Margaret Hardy. Dazed after a tornado caused by the supernova, Calvin and Margaret are mysteriously compelled into a joyless sex act. Calvin learns that Margaret and many other sixteen-year-old girls then slept around the clock and longer, with strange dreams. A few months later, it appears that no human pregnancies have started since the supernova. Calvin and others face the possibility of the extinction of humanity. Although most scientists are baffled, the retired zoology professor Angus McHarty speculates that some powerful entities have made use of the supernova to try to "take over" humanity, and conceptions are not occurring because at a deep level people prefer extinction to losing human identity. The people who slept, mostly girls, are becoming known as "Zeta mutants" after a new "zeta" rhythm observable in their brainwaves. Sometimes their minds "meld" together, and they can have visions, which seem to be precognitive. They tend to accept events as they come—"the pattern must fulfill itself." At least some of the girls among them feel compelled to have sex with Calvin, but he resists. Researchers are taking Zetas into custody because it appears that they can become pregnant, but Calvin escapes with help from the Zetas' sympathisers. It transpires that the Zeta research project produced no viable babies, and most of the subjects were killed or suffered mental damage. A remorseful world begins to treat the remaining Zetas well. Calvin proves to be a "diplodeviant", one of very few people whose zeta and alpha rhythms are in phase. McHarty suggests that the Zetas have largely joined the take-over by the "Briarians" and that the diplodeviants, who are less fatalistic than most Zetas, have the deciding vote in whether humanity as a whole will accept it. Calvin meets Margaret again and they become lovers. The children conceived just before the supernova, the "Twilight Generation", prove to be Zetas who share feelings and clairvoyant visions even more strongly than their elders. Most of them are brought to a centre in Geneva that is run along humanitarian lines. The supernova has disrupted the Gulf Stream and Britain's climate is becoming frigid, causing most of its inhabitants to leave. Calvin and Margaret move to Geneva for a few years. Calvin and Margaret have visions of a certain farm in England, which they feel they have to find. After an arduous trip to Lincolnshire (where the snow is not quite yet melting in June), they find the farm in the possession of a teen-aged orphan, Elizabeth, and her cousin, Tony. Elizabeth is perhaps the only Twilighter who is the child of a Zeta; Calvin reaches the conclusion that she is also the only female diplodeviant. Tony and Margaret fall in love, and then Calvin and Elizabeth do likewise. Elizabeth becomes pregnant. Spencer, a mystically and religiously inclined Zeta who had lived at the farm, returns to it. Calvin has increasingly explicit visions and then conversations with the "Briarians". He learns that he is called upon to choose between the old humanity with its struggles and the group consciousness and blissful life offered by the Briarians. Spencer compares Calvin's role to Christ's. Spencer's postscript tells how, as Elizabeth is in labour, feral dogs attach the farm. Calvin takes a shotgun to deal with them, and it fires, killing him. Spencer concludes that Calvin intentionally sacrificed his life, as he knew this action was the only one both old humanity and the Zetas and Briarians could accept. The baby is born. At this moment, Zetas become able to conceive, and the world's rebirth begins, guided by the spiritual powers of the new generation.