Book Review: Starship by Brian W. Aldiss

A comment by theofloinn on my review of Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky directed my attention to Brian Aldiss’s  Starship as another good example of a generation ship story. Thanks, it was good.

Published in 1958, Starship (also published under the name Non-stop) is the story of Roy Complain, a hunter who lives in the long passages of the Quarters as a member of the  violent, impoverished Greene Tribe. Beyond the barricades that mark the current extent of the Greene tribe’s village at either end of the passageway they currently occupy grow ‘ponics’ – huge, rapidly growing thickets of near impassible viny plants.

Roy hunts in the ponics, and trades his bush meat for other goods. Beyond the barriers live not only wild animals, but other tribes and mutants either alone or in small groups. It’s a jungle out there.

Tribes move slowly along their chosen corridor, laboriously clearing the ponics and moving the barriers forward. As they move, they uncover compartments, many locked behind doors. These compartments sometimes contain useful items, and so they are routinely broken into. The Greene tribe owes its existence to Grandfather Greene, who opened a compartment containing a store of dazers, weapons that stunned or killed man and beast, and thus was emboldened to form his own tribe. There were also higher and lower and branch passages as well of the main corridors.

Roy and his tribe live by the Teachings, a mish-mash of half-remembered Freud, such that violently expressing every feeling is considered virtuous, and those who keep theirs under control are considered weak. Makes for nasty, brutish and short lives.

In addition to the various tribes and mutants there are Giants, thought by many to be extinct – giant skeletons are sometimes found in fresh compartments – but with enough sightings to make others convinced giants still live.  Mysterious Outsiders, who look like men but are unnatural and suspected of doing harm, are also believed to have come from outside into the Ship, the name people give to the world. Ousiders are externally indistinguishable from tribesmen. One tribe, the Forwards, have better tech and live better lives. They occupy a different part of Ship, and so have passed almost into legend.

A set of circumstances eventually propel Roy and a couple other men to desert the tribe and follow the priest Maraper on an adventure of discovery. Maraper had come across a book that showed the circuit layout of the Ship, and therefore showed the general layout. Maraper has discovered that Ship really is a ship, and wants to find the Control Room.

Adventures ensue, with plenty of twists, mysteries and action to keep you reading, and a surprise ending that works pretty well. We have here what amounts to another post-apocalyptic survival story, just set in space. I’ll stop here just in case anyone doesn’t want spoilers. Good read. Recommended.