This book is fresh off the press, having been published just a few weeks ago. And there’s truth in advertising with this book. Can you guess what this one is about? Well done. This is a book about a generation ship!
There is a long history of generation ship novels – I will highlight a few that I have read more recently below – and like many or most of these generation ship stories, Generation Ship contains proven building blocks: The ship – the voyager – has been traveling through space for quite some time (over 250 years in this case) and is beginning to show signs of aging. The crew has been in space for generations, lives under a strict regime, and gravity or the lack thereof is a big thing. Their mission is one of exploration and possibly colonization: Finding a sufficiently habitable planet for humans to research and to ideally settle on.
These core tenets leave a lot of room though to weave a story and Michael Mammay does so solidly. The author spends considerable time introducing key crew members and the basic structure of the ship’s society: The autocratic governor, a scientist, a genius hacker, a cop, a farm worker, and the inevitable mobster form the key pillars of the cast. Together with approximately 20,000 other people they live on a ship that has been governed by the same rules – their ship charter – for over 250 years when they are finally approaching the target of their journey – the possibly habitable planet Promissa.
It is at that time, that crew members are beginning to challenge some of the core rules governing life on the ship and tensions continue to rise as the first probes sent to Promissa transmit back promising initial data but then all stop transmitting further information. While the ship is in final approach to Promissa conflicts threaten to escalate as factions on board argue over the best course forward (to land or not to land – that is the question), and key characters are engaging in dangerous politics.
Mammay tells this story through the eyes of multiple key crew members and in strict chronological order – chapters are all named after a crew member and the number of days relative to the arrival at Promissa. The book starts out somewhat slow as the author lays out the key elements of the cast and the story, but picks up speed as the Voyager comes ever closer to Promissa, and Mammay weaves in enough plot surprises to keep the reader engaged throughout the book.
All of this makes for a good story – this book is definitely a page turner – although some of the characters are a bit too predictable. Not every scientist or engineer is oblivious to human emotions, not every politician is only hungry for power, nor is every cop only aiming for the next promotion and all too willing to trade favors with the mob. This doesn’t really undermine the story or makes for a less interesting book, but it would have been nice had there been more unexpected character twists in addition to plot twists.
In the end, this was a good read – and one that left me wondering whether a second and possibly third part are on the horizon. There is definitely room to further work with the characters, the ship, and the planetary setting developed in Generation Ship. If there is a second part coming, I would buy it.
Either way, this book is worth a read.
Other stories about generation ships
To quote Wikipedia: “A generation ship, or generation starship, is a hypothetical type of interstellar ark starship that travels at sub-light speed. Since such a ship might require hundreds to thousands of years to reach nearby stars, the original occupants of a generation ship would grow old and die, leaving their descendants to continue traveling.” Generation ships have been a mainstay in science fiction as they allow authors to have their cast explore far away star systems without inventing close to light speed travel while creating a lot of room for stories and on board societies to evolve.
Here are a few generation ship stories I have read over the last few years.
Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji (2022): Set hundreds of years in the future as a convoy of generation ships is set to begin their braking manoeuvre into their target system after tens of generations onboard, Braking Day follows a young engineer investigating mysterious events on board the ship. The ship’s society is rigid: Rules that have been set by the first crew continue to dominate life and have established a strict class system on board. And most importantly (this is a common thread in several recently published sci-fi novels): After life on earth has become dominated by AIs, the ship’s systems are entirely free of any sort of artificial intelligence systems - until they aren’t. This is a good story with a surprising plot twist towards the end. An entertaining read.
The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei (2023): This book is a bit of an outlier in terms of generation ship novels. For starters, we are following generation one and not some distant descendants of the first crew. Beyond that, a large part of the book covers the back-stories of the (very young) crew members - their live on earth before being selected to join the crew of the Phoenix and their training for the mission. The actual ship story is somewhat conventional: An explosion on board, clearly triggered on purpose, the hunt for the culprit, and an important mission at risk of failure. There are some interesting elements to the story - the way crew members’ brains are directly linked to the ship and experience the ship largely through virtual interfaces and environments, for example, but at its core this feels like fairly typical young-adult fare: A group of young people going through education (back on earth) and extreme experiences (out in space) as they begin to shape their own story. A lot of good ideas here - but unfortunately too many ideas to give them the proper space and depth.
[Update: I have now written a proper review of this book here.]
Learning the World: a Scientific Romance by Ken MacLeod (2005): This one is a bit older, but I only discovered this book recently after reading the first part of MacLeod’s Lightspeed Trilogy. Learning the World has a ship-side story - after generations of travel the crew of the space ship “But the Sky, My Lady! The Sky! “ is entering their target system with a young generation on board ready to land and to build a new outpost for humanity in a universe that so far has been devoid of intelligent light. The book also has a planet-side story: A young astronomer believes he found a new comet, but realizes that something is very odd about that comet’s path. While the humans on board the space ship begin to detect faint signals from the planet, the planet’s population is slowly beginning to realize that something - or somebody - is coming to pay them a visit. The ship-side story here is quite conventional. What makes this book stand out is the parallel planet-side story. Worth reading.
Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter (2017): This is a generation ship story and - in parts 2 and 3 - so much more. The Noumenon is one of several convoys of spaceships having left earth in the 22nd century. Its goal: To explore a star system light years away that has shown strange activity. Noumenon follows the convoy over the centuries until the ships finally reach their destination. Again, this book has it all: Ship society, aging ships, crew, space… But Lostetter does a superb job creating a fascinating story here. thing get a bit more convoluted in parts 2 and 3 - but still worth a read. It’s been a while since I read Noumenon and I should possibly revisit this book sometime soon.