The Generation Starship in Science Fiction - 10 books YOU SHOULD READ!

Space is VERY VERY BIG! One way of handling that is to accept that the journey to the stars will take hundreds, even thousands, of years. Enter the Generation Starship! First postulated in the 1920s, science fiction writers have frequently borrowed this idea to give us great stories, and here are 10 that feature generation starships.
#scifibooks #sciencefiction #bookrecommendations #booktube

Books featured in this video:
Orphans of the Sky - Heinlein
Non-Stop - Aldiss
Aurora - Robinson
Generation Ship - Mammay
Ark - Baxter
Learning the World - MacLeod
The Ballad of Beta-2 - Delaney
Ship of Fools - Russo
Captive Universe - Harrison
Hull Zero Three - Bear

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[SciFiScavenger]

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.

[PeterKerans-hz]

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.

[waltera]

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.

[vladimircar]

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..👍

[ronin-ThorstenFrank]

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!

[TheEricthefruitbat]

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.

[TuftyMcTavish]

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.

[miljenkoskreblin]

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.

[MrSeventyAce]

Im currently in the early stages of researching for a book set on a generation ship and looking for inspiration. Thank you for making exact video I needed.

My favourite is "Paradises lost", a short story by Ursula le Guin. A kind of anthropological study on what culture aboard a generation ship might be like, with a bit of drama thrown in at the end. Worth a read.

[SoulsJourney]

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.

[jpotter]

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

[ashradiohead]

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

[SixStringSamuri]

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 😉

[davidcherrington]

I've only read two of the novels listed. "Orphans of the Sky" and "The Ballard of Beta Two". One novella I have read on generation ships is "200 Years to Christmas" by J.T. McIntosh. It was part of a old ACE Double Novel.

[SlowDazzle]

"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.

[leelack]

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.

[User_Un_Friendly]

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. 😉🐶😛

[inocanandrei]

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

[pauljazzman]

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

[andrewb.]

Interesting video, read the first two you've picked to discuss in this video... Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky" and Aldiss's "Non-Stop", I thought both were great reads. Although I have read some Stephen Baxter, Ken MacLeod and Greg Bear I haven't read these particular ones... will give them a shot some time... as well as possibly some of the others you've shown here.