Summary

In Part 1, “Stellar Nebula (Birth),” Térèse Giorno gives birth to Adina on September 5, 1977, the same day Voyager 1 is launched. Adina is premature and the doctors put her “under a phototherapy lamp” (5). Térèse has a difficult labor and struggles to recover in the hours following.

Adina has been sent to Earth to collect news about humans and report back to her home planet. She does not know her mission yet.

Térèse and Adina return to their home “across from Auto World in Northeast Philadelphia” (7). When Adina is four, her father builds her a swing and Térèse extracts “a fax machine from a neighbor’s trash,” but it does not work (9). Shortly thereafter, Adina starts visiting a Night Classroom in her dreams, where her superiors from space give her her assignment. She “wakes in her Earth...