Orphans of the Sky
Menschen zwischen den Sternen Das Universum ist fünf Meilen lang und besitzt einen Durchmesser von 2000 Fuß. Das denken die Bewoh- ner des Schiffes, denn sie haben das Erbe und die Mission ihrer Vorväter längst vergessen. Sie kennen die Sterne nicht mehr, und sie glauben nicht daran oder wollen nichts davon wissen, daß außerhalb des Schiffes, ihres Universums, überhaupt etwas existiert. Doch ein Mann lebt unter ihnen, der neugieriger und wißbegieriger ist als seine Mitmenschen. Dieser Mann namens Hugh Hoyland liest die Verbo- tenen Bücher und dringt sogar in den Geheiligten Ort ein, den niemand mehr zu betreten wagt. Hugh sieht zum erstenmal in seinem Leben die Sterne – und be- greift die schockierende Wahrheit.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
8mentions
8people
2010–2025years
38% recommend50% neutral13% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- "Orphans of the Sky" by R.Heinlein, very much recommended read.
- My favorite generation ship story is Heinlein's 'Orphans of the Sky'.
I was asking the poster about the specific plot point he mentioned: running out of food.
- Read 'Orphans of the Sky' by Robert Heinlein to get an idea of the many problems with this approach. Human society is not culturally stable enough to utilize a generation-ship method of space exploration.
- Sci-fi nerd recommendations follow.
I binged the entirety of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The cover, & the fact that it was on Kindle Unlimited, made me think it was probably cheap crap, but I was impressed with how well-written it was, and how much I empathized with the characters. (I probably should have read it slower; by the last two books, I was just flowing with the text, not paying as much attention to the overarching plot.)
Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky" was pretty bad. So much early scifi is considered great because it's groundbreaking, writing about things nobody else has before. The concept of a generation ship was pretty new at the time Heinlein was writing it, and it has some very interesting concepts, but the book has some really bad problems. If you've read it, you know; if you haven't, and decide to, you'll see it for yourself.
I binged a few Brandon Sanderson books. The standalones are great; the Stormlight Archive is a huge slog through some beautiful writing, but I'm not sure I'm willing to spend so much time in beautiful books that move the plot forward so slowly.
Exordia, by Seth Dickinson, started off incredible, kept going, but the ending felt like both a fizzle as well as a cliff-hanger for the next book. I'm glad I read it, but I wish it had a clear conclusion it wanted to reach.
Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Memory" delivers more of the great philosophical questions & answers about the nature of consciousness and personhood that the previous books did, A+. No idea where he could possibly go from there, but if he does, I'm going along for the journey. (Honorable mention: Alien Clay. Dishonorable mention: Service Model.)
Eric Flint's "Fenrir" was a fun BDO near-future space adventure. (As was John Sanford's Saturn Run, but that wasn't a 2025 book I read.)
- Heinlein also tackled some of these problems with generation ships in Orphans of the Sky[1].
- It would have been nice for the author to point out the original influences for their "embedded short story", like Orphans of the Sky by Heinlein.
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