ID this short story

December 14, 2009 7:45 PM

Sci-fiShortStoryFilter: A generation ship on a long-term voyage slowly forgets the purpose of its mission and begins to interpret the mission control manual and previous captain's logs as religious works, and cease working toward their target. Basically all other details I've forgotten, and I'm pretty sure it's not "Thirteen to Centaurus" by JG Ballard that I'm thinking of.
posted by palindromic to Media & Arts (29 answers total)

Heinlein's novel Orphans of the Sky?
posted by hawthorne at 7:52 PM on December 14, 2009

Paradises Lost by Ursula Le Guin
posted by typewriter at 7:54 PM on December 14, 2009

Sounds like The Starlost? It was a failed TV show co-created by Harlan Ellison and later made into a tie-in novel by Edward Bryant called Phoenix Without Ashes. Here's some more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlost. However, I don't see any mention of the manuals as religious artifacts.
posted by Max McCarty at 7:54 PM on December 14, 2009

Sorry, I forgot. Best synopsis I could find about Paradises Lost here.
posted by typewriter at 7:57 PM on December 14, 2009

Ben Bova's Exiles Trilogy?
posted by not that girl at 7:58 PM on December 14, 2009

I'm an idiot; a trilogy is hardly a short-story.
posted by not that girl at 7:59 PM on December 14, 2009

I also think it sounds like Paradises Lost. The religion is called Bliss, and they take the ship to be heaven, and they are reaching the new planet a few generations early. It's in her book The Birthday of the World.
posted by jeather at 8:05 PM on December 14, 2009

I believe hawthorne has it. The novel is two novellas, "Universe" and its sequel, "Common Sense". "Universe" was dramatized on X Minus One in May 1955.
posted by Gridlock Joe at 8:18 PM on December 14, 2009

The Ballad of Beta-2 is an excellent early novella by Sam Delaney exactly on this concept.
posted by ovvl at 8:18 PM on December 14, 2009

There are a LOT of stories with similar concepts. I can recall quite a few that have sort of blurred together for me.
posted by Slinga at 8:22 PM on December 14, 2009

It sounds a little bit like Captive Universe, by Harry Harrison. The idea in that story is that the crew members are actually supposed to take the manual as religious text in order to keep them in line. And in another part of the ship, there is a group of people who think they are basically Aztecs living in the middle ages or something.
posted by bingo at 8:27 PM on December 14, 2009

What about Harry Harrison's Captive Universe?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:29 PM on December 14, 2009

Response by poster: Hmm, I think I too may be blurring some plots. I know I haven't read any of these, but they all sound pretty interesting....
posted by palindromic at 9:02 PM on December 14, 2009

Your description sounded familiar to me, too, but I have not read any of the posted answer stories. I think there's another answer.
posted by rokusan at 10:13 PM on December 14, 2009

Orphans of the Sky is the first thing that came to mind when I read your question. I think Heinlein was the first with this idea from a science fiction standpoint. It's a spin off of his Methuselah's_Children series. Both of these are considered classics in the field.
posted by ptm at 10:20 PM on December 14, 2009 [2 favorites]

Not short stories, but could it be either Frank Herbert's Destination: Void or The Jesus Incident?
posted by aperture_priority at 10:21 PM on December 14, 2009

It also sounds pretty close to an episode of Star Trek TOS (which isn't a short story either)

For The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
posted by Gorgik at 10:35 PM on December 14, 2009

I might have read the same one you did...it was in an anthology, one of the major "Best of" annuals whose name escapes me now. Included were a mutated lower class/exiles, several levels of the ship with gravity decreasing at the higher levels or away from the center (physics what?), the lack of knowledge by most that they were on a ship in space (on autopilot), a priestly class who selected and taught children from a young age, and references to a named deity who was actually a (the only?) former captain. Also possibly a euthanasia/justice system involving a huge incinerator. Sound familiar?
posted by attercoppe at 11:18 PM on December 14, 2009

Should have said the priests taught ship's history from the logs as Holy Writ. "In the beginning, (Aerospace Company) made the world..."
posted by attercoppe at 11:21 PM on December 14, 2009

Okay, after googling, mine's definitely Heinlein's "Universe". Got most of the details right!
posted by attercoppe at 11:24 PM on December 14, 2009

Okay, one more and I'm done. Here. That is all.
posted by attercoppe at 11:27 PM on December 14, 2009

I immediately thought of Orphans of the Sky, too.
posted by flabdablet at 11:41 PM on December 14, 2009

Not quite the answer, but if you're after something similar, try Doctor Who: Full Circle
posted by jjderooy at 11:42 PM on December 14, 2009

Reminds me of Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss. The religion isn't based on the captain's logbooks but it's a generation ship with a passed-down misunderstood religion and plot-significant captain's logbooks. It is not a short story but a short novel. Kind of amazing how many different writers went to this well.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 12:15 AM on December 15, 2009

Probably not what you had in mind, but this concept is not that far from Book of the Long Sun (successor to Book of the New Sun) by Gene Wolfe. Clearly, the idea of pocket religions on generation ships is a fecund one.
posted by adamrice at 8:16 AM on December 15, 2009

Probably not the book the OP is looking for, but one of the best Generation Ship Gone Mad stories I know of is Richard Paul Russo's Ship of Fools.

The ship's population encounters a horribly malevolent alien race that seems to get-off on simply torturing and mutilating human beings:

Impaled on hooks projecting from the back wall of the chamber were the ruined skeletons of twenty-five or thirty infants. Bloodstained hooks protruded from the infants' chests and necks, through shattered ribs and throats...

Raised by Star Trek and Asimov to believe that any truly advanced alien race would be peaceful and tolerant, I loved the idea of aliens who not only didn't respect humanity, but seemed to have an almost religious obsession with mass atrocity.

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posted by General Tonic at 9:01 AM on December 15, 2009

Also not a short story, but Frank Robinson's "The Dark Beyond The Stars" is set on a generational ship where they've been out too long and forget who they are and what they're doing. I enjoyed it in my later teenage years, and it held up fairly well on a recent re-reading after I finally figured out the name of it again.
posted by zap rowsdower at 10:07 AM on December 15, 2009

It's possible you're thinking of "A Maze of Death" by Philip K. Dick.
posted by Locobot at 6:40 PM on December 15, 2009

It's Heinlein's "Universe." See if this sounds familiar -

humans versus "muties."

"Man of these ancient writings speak of the Trip as if it were an actual moving, a going-somewhere, as if the Ship itself were no more than a pushcart. How can that be?"

"Imagine a place a lot bigger than the Ship, a lot bigger, with the Ship inside it--moving. D'you get it?"

"There can't be anything bigger than the Ship. There wouldn't be any place for it to be."

Eventually a team of muties and a few humans find the bridge, with signs like "Acceleration, positive" and "Main engines -- not manned." and start to figure things out.
posted by tzikeh at 8:53 PM on December 15, 2009