6 Novels That Got to Alpha Centauri Way Before Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner

Yesterday, cosmologist Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner announced Breakthrough Starshot, a $100 million program to lay the groundwork for an interstellar mission to Alpha Centauri.
If that sounds like science fiction to you, you may have recently read Allen M. Steele’s new novel Arkwright, which follows one family’s efforts to do basically the same thing: design and build an interstellar spacecraft to go to a distant star, Gliese 667C-e.
In that spirit, here are six more science fiction novels that made it to Alpha Centauri long before Hawking and Milner decided to go:

Foundation and Earth, by Isaac Asimov
Taking place several centuries following the events of Asimov’s Second Foundation and continuing a story begun in Foundation’s Edge, this novel follows Councilman Golan Trevize, historian Janov Pelorat, and Blissenobiarella on a mission to locate Earth, the birthplace of humanity. They begin visiting other worlds, including Aurora, Solaria, and Melpomenia, before arriving at Alpha Centauri, where they find settlers from Earth who intend to keep their existence a secret—to the point they are willing to kill their discoverers. The trio escapes, and they finally do make their way to Earth.

Downbelow Station, by C. J. Cherryh
In C.J. Cherryh’s fantastic Alliance-Union series, Alpha Centauri is home to Beta Station, a second outpost run by the Earth Company. It’s a bit off the beaten path from the larger circle of stations within her widespread setting—the station was abandoned a little over a century after it was founded, and it would be centuries before the system would be recolonized.

The Songs of Distant Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke
In Arthur C. Clarke’s The Songs of a Distant Earth, scientists discover the sun will go supernova in the year 3600, and a massive effort is undertaken to spread humanity to the stars, using robotic probes carrying embryos to seed nearby systems. One of the first destinations is Pasadena, a planet of Alpha Centauri, where a thriving colony is established.

Clans of the Alphane Moon, by Philip K. Dick
A brutal war between humans and and insectoids in the Alpha Centauri system has ended, and Earth plans to establish a new colony on Alpha III M2, a planet overrun by escapees from a mental institution. The hospital moon, unattended during the war, has become a new settlement, populated by a variety of clans and factions. As Earth attempts to reestablish control of the moon, a CIA agent finds an opportunity to enact revenge as his marriage fails.

Neuromancer, William Gibson
William Gibson’s Neuromancer doesn’t take place in Alpha Centauri: the story of an emergent A.I. helped kick off the Earth-based cyberpunk genre. But the Alpha Centauri system does make a brief appearance at the very end of the book: the A.I. known as Wintermute begins to transcend its station on Earth, and as it goes through reams of old data, it discovers a counterpart A.I. exists in that system, and reaches out to begin communicating.

The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
During Mao’s Cultural Revolution, a revolutionary discovers a means to communicate with extraterrestrials, beaming a message about Earth into space, where it’s picked up by the far-distant Trisolarans, who respond in a decidedly unpleasant manner. Their civilization is a harsh one, based in Alpha Centauri, and upon learning about a new habitable planet, they prepare a massive, centuries-long effort to wipe out humanity and take control of the planet.