Yori Kashimoto, child of the generational Starship Galatea, is banished from the only known community of rational beings in the cosmos. No one knows what happened to the home planet Ulro, but technology has saved a remnant of humanity that now faces the question of how to turn a life-support system into a political order on Planet 2314. Yori has argued the wrong side of this issue and lost. Now condemned to live or die by his own ingenuity in the wilds of an unexplored planet, he takes shelter in a cave where no human has ever been and is suddenly addressed by the voice of a woman. That moment, in a story of hope where there is nothing to hope for, constitutes a new beginning in the ancient struggle between life and the life worth living.

Years later, Yori will leave a manuscript in that cave called History of a Dying Planet, that will prove to be an "archeological" account of failed Planet Ulro. That manuscript, alongside Starship Galatea and In the Hollow of Time, will constitute The Galatea Saga as a cycle in reverse chronology that finds its end in its beginning.