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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Gripping and moving tale of the search for identity.
Review: Mystery/suspense are seated comfortably alongside sci-fi in this story of a community of people searching for their lost past. Answers are hidden securely along the way, and are ultimately fascinating. The world Aldiss creates is strange and frightening, and the characters are memorable as each struggles for stability among chaos.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The search for freedom and identity
Review: Once again, a classic in the genre is out of print. If you can hunt this book down, it is worth the read. I haven't read any other generation ship stories before this one, but I found this one to not only be enjoyable but also emotionally compelling. Brian Aldiss is really trying to tell us about the built-in urge to be free and to discover who you really are. the plot is simple: The characters are on a huge ship hurtling through space but have no idea of that fact and simply know the ship as their world. The story unfolds as we discover the truth behind where and what the characters are. If you are interested at in in classic science fiction, then this is worth hunting down.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The search for freedom and identity
Review: Once again, a classic in the genre is out of print. If you can hunt this book down, it is worth the read. I haven't read any other generation ship stories before this one, but I found this one to not only be enjoyable but also emotionally compelling. Brian Aldiss is really trying to tell us about the built-in urge to be free and to discover who you really are. the plot is simple: The characters are on a huge ship hurtling through space but have no idea of that fact and simply know the ship as their world. The story unfolds as we discover the truth behind where and what the characters are. If you are interested at in in classic science fiction, then this is worth hunting down.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Aldiss' Answer to Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky
Review: Written as response to Robert A. Heinlein's ORPHANS OF THE SKY, a novel he felt lacking in emotion, Aldiss' novel is a classic generation starship tale.

The idea that their universe is the inside of a giant spaceship is known but derided in the Greene tribe. They're a barbarous lot. They destroy books whenever they find them. The Teaching, a Freudian inspired religion with its talk of id and ego, values full and immediate expression of fear and anger lest the repression of those emotions curdle into neurosis. A nomadic lot, they seal off the hallway they live in, moving the barricades when they exhaust the "ponics", plants that abound in the ship's corridors. Their power stems from a cache of weapons found two generations ago.

And protagonist Roy Complain is not happy with his life in the tribe. He gets flogged for losing his woman on a hunting expedition into the "deadways" beyond the tribes "Quarters". Chaffing under the Teaching and floggings of his tribe, Complain decides to accompany priest Marapper and three others through the deadways and to the land of the advanced people of Forwards. Marapper expects, somewhere, to find the ship's control room, seize control of the vessel, and end this painful journey through the stars.

In his wanderings, Complain learns the truth behind the other groups -- the mutants, the Outsiders, and the Giants -- rumored to inhabit the ship. Aldiss puts an ironic twist to the generation starship tale, particularly ORPHANS OF THE SKY, when he reveals the exact situation of the ship. By novel's end, Aldiss gives a detailed and ingenious explanation for Complain's world.

It's not necessary to read the Heinlein story, or any other generation starship tale, to appreciate this fine novel. Aldiss gives us believable emotion and, in Complain, a fine portrait of a man growing into a true knowledge of himself and his world.


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