1958: Non-stop (Aldiss, Brian)

Arboreal-overrun corridors with deformed green humans (5/5)
From August 19, 2009

Among my favorite science fiction books are two books published this decade- The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks and The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds. Also in my shortlist are paperback novels from years when even my dad was in his youth, such as Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. van Vogt and Tau Zero by Poul Anderson. These have been amongst the most satisfying of novels in my sequence of 250+ sci-fi books in the last three years, when I've started to read the genre. My top seven remains fairly stagnant, but Non-stop found a place for itself in my personal elite selections.

Knowledge that the entire novel takes place in a generation ship isn't made clear until then end, however, it is widely known that Non-stop is in fact one of the few `generation ship' novels. It's obvious from the start that the humans in the Quarters aren't very human at all- they are shrunken, green, time-skewed and deformed. Living in the same world but not in the same region are the mysterious Outsiders, the mythical Giants and the majestic Forwards. Visualize this: cramped corridors run over by exotic arboreal growths paralleled by yet-to-open chambers containing mementos of generations past. That's how the reader is introduced to the world in which these mutated humans live- in squalor, in poverty where they know no difference, in the seemingly wilderness. It's all very fascinating to imagine that feral human mutants running amok in the bowels of an ancient spaceship. If that doesn't interest you, maybe you shouldn't be reading sci-fi?

After the initial introduction to the world they live in, the plot becomes bogged down a bit by internal happenings in the Quarters. Perhaps I was just anxious to delve straight into the rest of the ship to discover what wonders or horrors it held. Much to my satisfaction, the plot proceeded to do just that. Later, I could appreciate the early lull in plot as it helped to characterize the village mutants as individuals and as a whole.

Further along, there is a romantic subplot, which other reviews don't seem to appreciate. However, when taken into the context that the relationship is being carried on by a village mutant and a beauty (as described by the mutant) it's unsettling to the reader as the reader doesn't know the intentions of the beauty. Is she using the mutant for her own purposes or is she honestly in love with him? Aldiss throws that massive wrench into the works as the reader attempts to figure out what is going on- it ain't easy. Through some guesswork, I figured out about half the ending while halfway through the novel. Perhaps it read too predictably or perhaps it was my intuition. Either way, I was still on seats edge awaiting every page, paying strict attention to every nuance and reading into every word in every conversation. Just fantastic!

For more novels regarding generation ships, look for Alastair Reynolds' Chasm City, Frank M. Robinson's Dark Beyond the Stars, and Gene Wolfe's Nightside of the Long Sun. I think I'm forgetting others I've read... shucks.

1972: Entry to Elsehwhen (Brunner, John)

Warning: Contains the worst novelette EVER (3/5)

As a big fan of Brunner's, it would be convenient for me to say that picking up a random Brunner novel should always be an exciting adventure... which would be true 66% of the time, but no sir, never 100% of the time. The same is true for this novelette/novella collection: 66% of it is quite good while the other 33% falls flat... and by flat I mean like paper-thin flat, elephant dung paper that's been compressed by a steam roller then sent to the surface of a neutron star. If you're NOT a hard core Brunner fan then I highly suggest you simply rip out the last 82 pages and leave yourself with a two novelette book worth reading.

Host Age - 4/5 - The rapidly mutating Plague is devastating England, where one victim in ten dies from complications which no two individuals exhibit the same symptoms. When leading research from the Plague's cure becomes destroyed and the investigation can find no sign of entry from the perpetrators, suspicion arise which implicate the recovering astronaut and the current theoretical research into matter transmission. 45 pages --- Only lacking spaceships, Host Age is a Golden Age-style story which combines all other science fiction cliques into one story. The result, contrary to prevalent cliques, proves to be one of excitement, intrigue, and mystery. It's not exactly character-based, but the plot's momentum is quite enough to convey Brunner's craftiness.

Lung Fish - 4/5 - On the way to Tau Ceti II aboard a generation ship, two generations of crew are is silent conflict: the logical Earthborn are taken aback by the unemotional Tripborn. With two weeks left before the arrival, the caretaker-minded Earthborn begin a secret plan to influence the Tripborn to become claustrophobic and eager to colonize the planet. 47 pages --- An excellent plot compounds an interesting juxtaposition of crew sects, but the conclusion feel pressed into an unnatural form.

No Other Gods But Me - 0.01/5 - Coincidental encounters between Colin and Vanessa become increasingly bizarre when they are transported to a strange abode as they huddle for safety from the heavy English rain. Along with a cloaked man stalking them and seeing shadows in their periphery, something clearly isn't natural. During a congregation of a fad religion in the heart of New York, the two are transported again to a parallel world with a psychic overlord, abysmal living conditions, and more telekinetic ability than Colin and Vanessa's earth could ever have... and there's a legless human boy who can fly. 82 pages --- The ONE hope I held onto was that the possibility remained that Colin, the lethargic body-double for a doorstop of a so-called protagonist, would commit suicide for the benefit of fictional mankind and for the well-being of science fiction readers across the globe. Possibly, the worst novella ever produced.

2010: Hull Zero Three (Bear, Greg)

Internalizing the essence of exploration and fear (5/5)
From July 21, 2011

It appears that Hull Zero Three hasn't been very well received on Amazon and that's pretty sad. I greatly anticipated its release and was mystified by the Vine program's negative feedback. To truly appreciate Hull Zero Three, I think the reader needs to meet two criteria, like myself:
1) The reader needs to understand most of Greg Bear's work, including his 1980s and 1990s grand space spectacles of The Way series and Forge of God series). Also, the reader must feel distanced by Bear's work since the millennium (Quantico, Vitals and especially City at the End of Time). This will give you a proper lead-up to what Bear has accomplished and why Hull Zero Three is a return to his grand tradition of space spectacles.

2) The reader must be disappointed in the state of the art of American science fiction. I don't read any of the stuff since the millennium as there's been a preferred chasm of difference with British SF. US SF tends to have very short paragraphs with lots of dialogue and it nearly always reads like a Hollywood scrip for people with short attention spans.

NOW, open up the deliciously ambiguous book entitled Hull Zero Three. Granted, from the onset, the initial "man wakes up on ship with amnesia" isn't exactly unique but banish that from your feeble mind as the subject is at the masterful (er, with the exception of End of Time) hands of Greg Bear. Like the main character, Teacher, we, too are borne unto this novel with little knowledge of what is happening but we grow to understand the environment, the dangers, the expectations and direction: where the Teacher learns so the reader, where the Teacher panics so the reader panics. Identify with this: "I'm just a pair of eyes on the end of a stalk of neck with a brain and some hands and legs attached."

I won't to expose too much detail about the greater scene of the book because it's important that the reader, like to protagonist, learns as he/she goes. So, to just glance over the plot, here it is: Three separate hulls are on a 500-hundred-year journey to inhabit the stars. Something has gone wrong, albeit a malicious deviation of course or a natural phenomenon. People are being awoken, these people are being killed by the Ships machines. On board is the entire Gene Pool of earth and the landing crew will make use of this gene pool to adapt to the environment of the one planet they will fall upon. They have only the one shot to establish their civilization.

I must mention the Gene Pool part of the plot because it's by far the most titillating potential in the entire book. Stop and think about the variation of life on earth and how, in the future, it may be possible to alter man in any way, always abiding by the gene pool, to suit Man for life on other planets. Hull Zero Three visits some minor shifts in the human DNA but always tiptoes around some of the more exotic spectrum of what humans could become. The details revolving around this 500-year trip and the gene pool are hugely enticing and very rewarding.

Like mentioned in criterion #2, Hull Zero Three is unlike anything the US SF has recently produced (this includes Vinge and the peripheral Star Wars, Star Trek and Halo series). No author has gotten it right except for our friends across the pond, many of whom I'm a great fan of: Banks, Hamilton, Reynolds, Stross. Greg Bear writes in a style similar to the British friends, where there is more of a focus on describing environment, emotion, experience and detail with longer paragraphs, more internal monologue and less frivolous chit-chat.

"Exploring," in his purest essence, isn't about banally chatting about what you're seeing... it's about internalizing the experience and relating yourself to your surroundings. Much like Hull Zero Three - you'll explore the Ship (Hulls One AND Three!) through the internalized experience of Teacher. However, you'll also be grappling with the fear of death, dismemberment, starvation and suffocation. Great contrast.

1974: The Dream Millennium (White, James)

Millennial colonists plagued by nightmares of death (4/5)
From June 30, 2010

James White continues his characteristic plot scheme by involving a doctor and medical science throughout the storyline even though it takes place outside of the Sector General universe. Rear cover synopsis: "Earth was a polluted, dying planet. Violence was rampant and civilization was doomed. If Man was to survive, John Devlin had to find him a new home somewhere in the galaxy. He had 1,000 years to look - and 1,000 years to dream. But all his dreams were nightmares..."

Leaving Earth on a 1,000 year journey to ten solar systems with possibly inhabitable planets, the 200+ colonists of the craft enter a cooldown, where they agelessly sleep away the years only to be occasionally revived every hundred of so years to exercise and to remember. It is during this cooldown when Devlin experiences fantastic dreams of others' lives; of royalty, of saurian origin, of revolution, etc. Why is it that Devlin remembers each dream so vividly and why is it that he can recall pre-departure events just as clearly? His recurrent awakenings probe this mystery as the recall becomes stronger and as he discovers the body of one of his fellow colonists frozen to the cold steel of the bulkhead in an apparent suicide.

The first third of the novel has a bizarre yet wonderful scope involving Delvin's awakenings aboard the craft, his life prior to recruitment and his vicariously realistic dreams. This is entirely rich and vivid; unlike anything White has produced (this being my 7th White novel). The plot is more like a John Brunner novel, involving characters in extraordinary circumstances amidst the stars. The fallacy springs about midway through the novel when the majority of the text starts to focus on the vicarious dreams; life after life after life, only to end in death each time. The spotlight is taken away from the great millennium journey and its righteous goal of establishing a human colony on a distant star when Earth itself is dying.

I can see White's noble approach to probing one man's mind, his dreams and his meaning to the greater extent of the mission at hand. But the repetitious mini-lifetimes doesn't add much depth to the purpose of the very same dreams, which is made a little more clear towards the end of the novel. This journey inwards versus the journey outwards is a decent attempt but overshadowed by Pohl's Gateway, which is pristine in inwardness/outwardness. However, as far as a White novel goes, this is one of his more thoughtful and unique novels.