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dsrtao_Dust_, Elizabeth Bear
_The Edge of Reason_, Melinda Snodgrass
Has any generation ship in SF had a completely routine mission, with no disaster, unexpected course change, mutiny, rebellion, invasion, plague, or arrival just a little while after the FTL task force finishes setting up the banners that say "Welcome Home Second Cousins Three Hundred Times Removed"?
I suppose that when that happens, it tends to be background for the Galactic Empire story. Bear's not telling that one, anyway. The Jacob's Ladder is a huge generation ship -- from internal evidence, I'm guessing more than 40Km long -- and some time ago it had problems which killed an awful lot of the crew and forced an emergency pit stop at the next solar system. Even worse, they picked a binary system on the ragged edge of becoming a Type Ia supernova. That's the shotgun we see over the mantel in scene two.
That would all be bad enough, but the ship's AI has fragmented into a few dozen Angels having a nanotech battle for domination and control, mirrored by the impending war between the Engine clan and the Rule clan. As is repeatedly observed by characters in the book, "Primogeniture is a stupid way to run a starship". Good story-telling, although I never really understood why one of the main viewpoint characters fell in love with the other one.
Complete in one volume, although there will apparently be a sequel next year.
Snodgrass, on the other hand, sets us up for volume one in a never-ending speculative fiction series about the battle between Rational Scientific Thought (Good, led by Satan with his sidekick Homeless Hippie Jesus) and Religious Mysticism (Bad, led by every god you've ever heard of, with their sidekicks the Christian Evangelists). It turns out that the gods (or Old Ones) are energy-being aliens from other universes that eat emotional energy. The flavor that they find easiest to induce in humans is, of course, hatred and anger. It may be that love tastes better, but it's harder to farm, so they mostly don't. There is some confusion (or I was confused) about whether they feed on emotion or they are created by sufficiently strong emotions; you see, Jesus has a multiple persona disorder based on the idea that some people think of him as being all hippie-peacenik-revolutionary-lovey-dovey, and some people go on crusades and commit extraordinary renditions and burn books in his name, hallelujah.
Well. It was a good story, but about 50 pages from the end I became aware that this could not reasonably be wrapped up in the space alloted. Instead, there is a temporary ending, and a chapter which clearly establishes the premises for as many more novels as Ms. Snodgrass can sell in the same universe.
_The Edge of Reason_, Melinda Snodgrass
Has any generation ship in SF had a completely routine mission, with no disaster, unexpected course change, mutiny, rebellion, invasion, plague, or arrival just a little while after the FTL task force finishes setting up the banners that say "Welcome Home Second Cousins Three Hundred Times Removed"?
I suppose that when that happens, it tends to be background for the Galactic Empire story. Bear's not telling that one, anyway. The Jacob's Ladder is a huge generation ship -- from internal evidence, I'm guessing more than 40Km long -- and some time ago it had problems which killed an awful lot of the crew and forced an emergency pit stop at the next solar system. Even worse, they picked a binary system on the ragged edge of becoming a Type Ia supernova. That's the shotgun we see over the mantel in scene two.
That would all be bad enough, but the ship's AI has fragmented into a few dozen Angels having a nanotech battle for domination and control, mirrored by the impending war between the Engine clan and the Rule clan. As is repeatedly observed by characters in the book, "Primogeniture is a stupid way to run a starship". Good story-telling, although I never really understood why one of the main viewpoint characters fell in love with the other one.
Complete in one volume, although there will apparently be a sequel next year.
Snodgrass, on the other hand, sets us up for volume one in a never-ending speculative fiction series about the battle between Rational Scientific Thought (Good, led by Satan with his sidekick Homeless Hippie Jesus) and Religious Mysticism (Bad, led by every god you've ever heard of, with their sidekicks the Christian Evangelists). It turns out that the gods (or Old Ones) are energy-being aliens from other universes that eat emotional energy. The flavor that they find easiest to induce in humans is, of course, hatred and anger. It may be that love tastes better, but it's harder to farm, so they mostly don't. There is some confusion (or I was confused) about whether they feed on emotion or they are created by sufficiently strong emotions; you see, Jesus has a multiple persona disorder based on the idea that some people think of him as being all hippie-peacenik-revolutionary-lovey-dovey, and some people go on crusades and commit extraordinary renditions and burn books in his name, hallelujah.
Well. It was a good story, but about 50 pages from the end I became aware that this could not reasonably be wrapped up in the space alloted. Instead, there is a temporary ending, and a chapter which clearly establishes the premises for as many more novels as Ms. Snodgrass can sell in the same universe.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-23 06:59 pm (UTC)Yes, but never as the focus of a story, because it would make a dull focus. I suppose one might use it as a mere setting, but why go to all the world-building effort if it's just a background element?
I think the universe of _Altered Carbon_ had a bunch of reasonably successful generation ships in the background. There is evidence of widespread mutiny/rebellion, but they were successful in the sense that they had teh end result of new human-inhabited planets.
Successful?
Date: 2008-05-24 02:14 pm (UTC)Well, so did the Vanguard, eventually. ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-23 07:59 pm (UTC)Multiple personae, or multiple people?
Date: 2008-05-24 02:25 pm (UTC)Personally, I'd think a more interesting approach would be that there are actually multiple individuals, multiple deities called into existence by different sets of beliefs. Where the believers agree, the deities act in concert, and we see them as one being; where they disagree, the deities start to split. This could even be seen as a compatible refinement of the "many believers make me strong" approach, because 1,000 deities acting in concert are stronger than a singleton.
Oh, and it makes religious wars more interesting: when two sides of a schism go to war, the deity fissures and goes to war with itself.
Re: Multiple personae, or multiple people?
Date: 2008-05-25 07:42 pm (UTC)