Відео

Half of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time features a starship that is unintentionally forced to be a generation ship, despite not being designed for that purpose. The protagonist goes through long periods of hibernation, each time waking up to find himself in a new era of the ship's ongoing culture.

The image on page 113 i have as a limited edition print, Chris Foss art work is very sought after with only 100 of each released all signed and numbered.

Hmm i read almost all of them except ken and kim. Please check ship of fools by richard paul russo (so far i didn't see you mentioned it) Okay you mention it lol. Oh well :)

Mayflies by Kevin O'Donnell Jr. Is my favourite generation ship novel. I think it might have been the first of this theme I read. Might be time for a re-read and review since no one much seems to be taking about it. I do kind of want to read/ re read that Delaney though.

Great list, but consider including Gene Wolfe's Books of the Long Sun.

Enjoyed your video. Newer subscriber and a fan. How about Cities in Flight and Tau Zero. Truly can’t remember if they both qualify as true generation books.

Aurora pretty much puts paid to generation ships. There is no plan(et) B.

This is a great sub-genre. I own a handful of these books, but I’ve only read “Unto Leviathan” so far. I remember really enjoying that one, but that read pre-dates when I started jotting down notes in 2009 when I joined GR.

"Non-Stop" has always been my favourite GS book. I've still got my copy signed by the man himself. I'd like to read "Aurora" as it might be more manageable than his Mars trilogy. Oh God, Greg Bear has done a GS novel. Doubtless it consists of relentless science lectures to all the crew! Don't forget short stories like Ballard's "Thirteen to Centaurus" which is a GS with a twist. Great video as usual.

I read Rogue Moon some years back - the book was written in 1961 - and it is an excellent and gripping tale and it is worth noting that Budrys invented the transporter years before Star Trek :-). I read Roadside Picnic more recently and am a big admirer of the Strugatsky brothers. But 'A Fire Upon the Deep' is one of the more amazing books I've read from a conceptual level. Definitely stretches your brain muscles.

Thinking about reading lots of these…. Which would u recommend most for me??

Couldn't disagree more with you about Lord of Light. I'll add five stars to your rating.

I recently read Poul Anderson's *Tau Zero* ... a short book, but hair-risng and mind-blowing.

I always thought that Generation Ship tropes were not my cup of tea … and I ended up adding two books of this video to my TBR 😉

Fantastic video on a subject of great interest to me at this time. Currently getting ready to reread Orphans of the Sky by Heinlein. Just acquired a new subscriber good sir. Thanks also to the other recommendations buy fellow commenters.

Concernig Baxter's Ark, there is also a collection of three novellas that chronicles what happens on Earth 1,2, and 3. It's called Landfall, it's terrific. To further praise Baxter, while technically a novella, his brilliant Mayflower II should also be included. Great video.

Good Video. I have a few of these added to my tbr. I have read Non-Stop and loved it.

Great list!

Thanks for this. I'm Scottish but, somehow, had managed to miss Gary Gibson's work - now added to my list. Big fan of Ken MacLeod, and enjoy some of Iain and Iain M Banks's work. Glad you highlighted Martin MacInnes too and, wow, Naomi Mitchison - I'm going off to look for Memoirs of a Spacewoman.

Come now, we all know that space is fake and gay. Thanks for the recommendations though

Great stuff. I have read some generation ship stories including hull zero three (dnf) they all seem a bit depressingly in the same vein as they highlight the very real problems with generation ships as a concept. Brian Aldiss's book Nonstop was apparently inspiration for Space 1999 ‘Mission of the Darians’ Where Moon base Alpha meets a failed generation ship who had fallen into chaos

I love how you organize your book videos into themes. It's so useful to compare similar settings and plots. It may be hard to justify in a scholastic setting, (imagine writing up the syllabus and having to pick from the book list) but it's a really useful way to group them in your head. You've really put the time and work into reading the texts so that you can do these videos. That rocks.

Wow, amazing, I love the video, thanks for your research and sharing

A couple of others that come to mind are Frank M Robinson’s The Dark Beyond The Stars, and Alexei Panshin’s Rite of Passage, both enjoyable and well regarded novels. Great video, thanks.

Rogue Ship by A E Van Vogt

Good content even though I have never been a fan of generation ship books just because they tend to deal with infighting and politics within the ship as a main part of the story as opposed to a secondary part of the plot. You read one and you basically get the gist of all the rest. Sounds like Learning the World, The Ballad of Beta 2 and Ship of Fools provide more than just the drama on the ship though. Might give those a try.

Great video, as always, Jon! TBH, I don´t like the generation ship topic much. My favourite books are Delany´s The Ballad of Beta 2 and KSR´s Aurora. The latters extremely depressing (but very realistic) ending is the reason I don´t like the topic very much. Delany´s entry is another reason and one of my favourite stories on the topic is a German short story (Generation ship is reaching it´s destination which is already settled by humans that reached FTL a decade after the original mission launched - and it, too, has a partly depressing end). One interesting book in that regard is Starship Century, which is a combination of short stories and scientific essays which has a few entries on the topic. Another interesting science/fiction combo is The Protoss Mandate by Nick Kansas (also a fave of mine). I was also surprised that you didn´t include E.C. Tubbs The Spaceborn because it´s another relatively well-known novelette. Have a good week!

Great list, Thanks. Just finished and enjoyed Generation Ship, which I thought was really good but felt the characters could have been developed a bit more. Loved Captive Universe and Hull Zero Three but will definitely look at some of the others mentioned here. This is a great sci-fi sub genre.

Great video, Jon! You really covered all the significant novels that are based on the generation ship idea. Was happy to see you didn't leave out Harry Harrison's Captive Universe! It has a unique take with the Aztec setup, imo. But I honestly can't figure out the reason for the "AZTECS IN SPACE!' sound effect...wtf?

As an antidote to these mostly grim stories, _Record of a Spaceborn Few,_ is much more optimistic, as one would expect from Becky Chambers. While the story does take place on a generation ship from Earth's "Exodus Fleet", the crew is no longer isolated; the fleet encountered wider galactic civilization, and some humans participate in it, as described in other works of_Wayfarers_ series. However, the society on the ship is still pretty much self-contained (but the story also features an immigrant.)

Is Ark by Baxter really a generation ship novel? You've said the journey only took 9 years... 😮 Songs of Distant Earth is a Generation Ship novel, a Star Seeding novel, and Lifeboat from a destroyed Earth novel. Sun is expected to go Nova in 3600 AD. Ships carrying human embryos with robot nannies are sent out. (Star Seeding) One such successful colony encounters the last Lifeboat from Earth, a Generation Ship that will have profound implications to the laid back, relaxed life on the planet. The ship is there to replace the Ice Shield on the front of the ship, which is used to keep the ship intact while traveling near Relativistic speeds. Lots of ideas crammed in by Clarke, certainly one of his more readable books. 👍 Good video, Jon. While not a genre I've much interest in, it's certainly nice to hear about books I might one day develop a desire to check out. 😉🐶😛

I think I've read about generation ship stories more than reading the actual stories themselves. I have generally leaned toward more pulpy adventure stories over the years and that sort of thing usually handwaves away interstellar travel times.

Only generation ship novels I would add to this list are Gene Wolfe's Long Sun quartet.. Great video BTW, good coverage of important SF..👍

First time watcher and new sub for you! Tchaikovsky is fast becoming one of my favourite sci-fi authors and Dogs of War is on my tbr next month. I recently finished his Shards of Earth and loved it. In a similar vein to Becky Chambers, you might like to try Frontier by Grace Curtis. It's an apocalyptic, climate change love story. Trust me. It's great. My current read is Peter F Hamilton's Great North Road. At 1000+ pages, I'm taking my time with this one.

I started a "generation ship" novel long ago, assuming a body of 45,000 souls, 90% in stasis, at any time, with 5,000 "refreshed", to run the ship for their lifetimes, having children, who are put in stasis when they reach adulthood (or late teens), on a voyage expected to last more than 500 years. When one group passes on, another is refreshed, taking up the reins. This ensures a live human oversight for any emergencies along the way, and prevents the dangers of long-term storage debilitating the "cargo". I still have a few hundred pages somewhere (I hope). I often wonder if humans didn't arrive on Earth by such a means, displacing the Neanderthals. Cro-Magnons might have been a result of interbreeding, and the variations in human reflecting the areas settled by the newcomers, Asians, Indians, Africans, Natives in North and South America, and the Europeans. Of course, newer discoveries in the spread of humans made this thesis unworkable, as the spread of PIE peoples literally seeded the world.

I haven't read any of these, but Baxter's "Ring" centers on a generational ship. Also John Brunner's "A Maze of Stars", although that deals more with the human colonies delivered via the ship, and to a lesser degree "The Boat of a Million Years" by Poul Anderson (the ship doesn't appear until very late in the novel). Obviously a genre I enjoy, so thanks for mentioning all these books! I'll definitely be adding most, if not all, to my TBR list.

I haven't read any generational ship books, but one of my favourite TV series was the oft-maligned "The Starlost", about such a ship which has had an accident which destroyed the people who operated the ship (leaving only unsuspecting, unknowing groups in many pods). Reviled, but beloved by me.

I've only read Hull Zero Three of this bunch, had bought it on impulse, and enjoyed it.

The standalone Alan Dean Foster novel Quozl begins on a generation ship near the end of its journey, but the crew are aliens, the Quozl. Their destination, a planet they are calling Shiraz, but they are soon to find that it is already inhabited by us. Not us now (or 1989, when it was published), but some time during one of the world wars (before broadcast television).

I hope you enjoy this video, and my thanks to everyone that suggested a book I might include in this video. For more like this one, I encourage you to have a delve into this playlist which contains all my list and thematic videos. ua-cam.com/play/PLXv18KNFYD7T4K6h9jhNtzcUeYYWLOuZy.html&si=kTJ3IakIndHG6LdK