Brian Aldiss’s Helliconia trilogy follows one planet through one year. That year lasts 2,592 of ours.
Across Spring, Summer and Winter, the cast list changes completely. Each book has its own cities, rulers and households, each living through a different season of the same slow orbit around two suns. This means a great many names to hold in your head: JandolAnganol, SartoriIrvrash, Bathkaarnet-she, Eedap Mun Odim. Even devoted readers lose the thread without annotating the margin or sketching on scratch.
So we drew it out. Choose a book below, then click any name to see how the text ties that person to the others. Every tie is marked as either stated outright or told as legend.
A note on spoilers: the Helliconia family trees hide late-book connections by default. If you’ve read all three books, switch on “Reveal spoilers” and a few more lines appear.
A few things to look for as you explore.
Helliconia Spring reaches back into legend. The founders’ story is told inside the book, so those ties carry a “told as legend” tag, and they sit alongside the family at the centre of the book, Laintal Ay’s.
Helliconia Summer is political. Its royal houses are tied together by planned marriages, and the Eagle of Borlien and the court of Oldorando are never far apart on the page.
Helliconia Winter is four households: the Keeper of the Great Wheel’s sons, a betrothal arranged at birth, a widow in a strange land, and a porcelain dealer with a wife, three children and a mistress.
One family tie crosses from one book into another. If you’ve finished the trilogy, open the “Across the books” tab and switch on spoilers to find it.
New to Helliconia? Start with Spring. Already a reader? Tell us what we’ve missed or got wrong. The trees get better with every correction.
