I thought I had a great idea for a sci-fi novel: several generations into an incredibly long interstellar voyage, the younger denizens of the self-sustaining starship rebel against the futility of their role in the mission-- they feel a deep ennui about their rather pragmatic purpose to live, propagate, and die in space . . . allowing some future kin to inhabit a distant world; they recognize that the ship is their entire universe and that their life is simply a part of a much longer trip . . . it's symbolic or metaphorical or something, but then I didn't a little internet research and found out that this book has already been written and it's far better than anything I could imagine; Robert Heinlein's novel Orphans of the Sky skips the symbolism and feelings . . . the mutiny on the interstellar generational ship happened long ago, and now there is a superstitious pre-technological civilization living within the ship-- there are oligarchical "captains" and "scientists," but they don't do much of either-- as they believe the ship IS the entire universe and can't really understand the ancient texts, most of which are labeled heretical, and then there are the mutants and the illiterates and they all come into conflict and create a new order . . . the book is fast-moving and short and I highly recommend it (it's cheap for the Kindle).
No comments:
Post a Comment