Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear is a generation ship story. What’s a generation ship, you might ask?
The stars are so far away, with the closest being four light years distant, that it’s nearly impossible to visit other stars with any technology we can imagine. If a ship could travel at a tenth of the speed of light it would take 40 years to travel to the nearest star. So to get anywhere, a ship has to be outfitted so the crew that leaves never arrives. They live their lives on the ship, they have children, and grandchildren, and grand-grandchildren who all live and die on the ship. The generation that finally eventually arrives never knew earth, never lived on a planet, and never experienced the outdoors. Just imagine you live on a ship that arrives on a new planet that you will populate now, and you know that the ship left 240 years ago – when we signed the Declaration of Independence.
There are a lot of things that can go wrong on a journey that lasts centuries.
Hull Zero Three is a story of such a generation ship. A man wakes up busting out of a pod, naked, freezing, wet, and in darkness. He does not know where he is and who he is. The environment is completely alien and very hostile. But he survives, and he slowly finds out who he might be and where he is.
Besides describing the Ship, this novel also deals with the ethical and psychological aspects of sending humans on such trips.
This is not an easy read. You have to be interested in the construction of a space ship. There is a lot of detail that would make no sense to anyone but a science fiction buff. And the generation ship aspect adds yet a different twist.
If you are interested in other generation ship stories, I have compiled a list below with my reviews.
Generation Ship Novels:
Aurora – by Kim Stanley Robinson
Ship of Fools – by Richard Paul Russo
Orphans of the Sky – by Robert A. Heinlein
The Dark Beyond the Stars – by Frank M. Robinson
Seed of Light – by Edmund Cooper
Tau Ceti – by Kevin J. Anderson
Here is something amazing. I once asked Greg Bear what branch of science he majored in, and he said he was an English major! When my jaw dropped, he smiled humbly and said, “I have a lot of scientist friends.”
Greg’s work is not so heavy on science. This book, for instance, talks about scientific ideas, but only in broad strokes. Not like Robert Forward, whose Camelot 30K just reeks of science, too much, really.
Speaking of Forward, my favorite of his is still Dragon’s Egg. Do you remember that?