So, with the Earth heating up like an oven, whole cities submerged underwater, and global civil rest now beyond the ability of governments to control, one enterprising billionaire proposes a daring solution — leave.
So he puts assembles a massive starship, along with a crew of six hundred people to fly the ship to a distant planet (about fourteen light years away) to start a new human colony.
The only sticking point is that it will take about three hundred years and at least ten generations to reach it. So this is an epic of a tale about the thousands of people who are born, live and die on the journey to HD-40307g, the vast majority of whom will never see Earth or their future home.
Most of the journey will, of course, pass without incident, so the story concentrates on the events and people (mutineers, dissenters, power failures, and famine) that threaten to destabilise Shipworld and endanger the whole mission.
Okay, first off the bat, there are no space battles, no aliens (well, maybe one), and no real sense of jeopardy. So if you’re looking for that, then look elsewhere.
What you do get is a humorous, sensitive exploration of love, courage, and loss based around an ever-changing population (so many, that you may find it hard to keep track) sealed in a massive tin can careening through the void. The book is touching in places, and very funny in others (odd that the Shipworld designers knew that the ship would have flip around and back into orbit, ten years before making planetfall, but didn’t think it would be nice to fit windows near the aft of the spacecraft). Some of the crew’s stories are covered from birth to death, but some mysteries are touched upon, but not really explored. For example, the billionaire who instigated the project didn’t travel with them. It was hinted that he may have joined a Chinese mission to the same planet, and chosen to go with them because he spend the journey in cryogenic sleep — but we didn’t find out, one way or the other.
Still, aside from that, and an ending I felt was a little incomplete, a very enjoyable book.
