Due to resource scarcity, only one clone of a person is allowed to exist at any one time, and, similarly, reproduction is restricted to one child per person. Related to this, while technology has been developed to allow people to back-up their memories, this is only permitted for implantation within a cloned body in case of death. The information received from this includes extensive material on biological modification, and while sex changes and other modifications have become routine surgeries, experimentation with human DNA remains taboo and forbidden on penalty of death. Human expansion to the Eight Worlds has been aided by a broadcast of information from outside the Solar System, named "The Ophiuchi hotline" after the constellation from which it appears to originate. The Invaders originate from a gas giant planet, and have occupied Jupiter, forbidding human access to it. Prior to the beginning of the story, humanity has been expelled from Earth by powerful aliens known as "the Invaders", and scattered across eight planets and satellites of the Solar System, the so-called Eight Worlds. Part of his Eight Worlds series, the novel opens in the year 2618. The Ophiuchi Hotline is a 1977 science fiction novel by American writer John Varley.
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