The Ascension Factor (1988) is the fourth and final science fiction novel set in the Destination: Void universe by the American author Frank Herbert and poet Bill Ransom.

It completes the story of the humans descended from those left by the voidship Earthling on the planet Pandora approximately 480 years earlier.

Towards the end of the book, the protagonists speculate that there is no organised resistance, merely individual people engaging in one off acts of disobedience, that serve to disrupt Flattery's control.

To this end he ordered the assassination of Alyssa Marsh, a kelp researcher and one of the last three humans who survived the hyb tank opening and Flattery's former lover who rejected him.

While the original voidship program used OMCs that the designers knew would go insane forcing the crew to develop an artificial intelligence in order to survive (this led to the creation of Ship in the earlier books), Flattery does not want to risk another AI and believes that by giving the OMC sensory inputs and the ability to speak it will not go mad.

While fleeing in a hydrofoil, the boat's door is opened and the scent of Crista reaches a giant stand of blue kelp.

About to be killed, Crista and Ben are instead hidden from the sight of Flattery's agents by some sort of hologram that vastly exceeds human technology levels.

Brood is to earn redemption by, having learned of his parentage through the altered consciousness, tending to his mother as the OMC onboard the Voidship Nietzsche as she dictates to him a manual of proper human behaviour.

MacIntosh and Beatriz are to take themselves, other humans and the symbiotic shared consciousness Avata to a new planet far away from Pandora whose days are numbered.