Cover image from Goodreads.com
Colony ship Voyager has been travelling for 250 years to get to the planet Promissa, where they plan to land and colonize. Except every probe that reaches the surface goes dead before it can transmit information. With roughly four and a half months until their journey is complete, scientists must work out the problem while being hindered by the Governor’s political desires and a growing faction of people that believe colonization is wrong.
The novel counts down to arrival date, detailling how the Governor skews information and manipulates media so the residents of the ship see only what he wants them to see. Pushing against him are the scientists who want more information from the surface of the planet before committing to sending large groups down. In addition, the ship’s Charter has a mandate of a death date: the person’s 75th birthday, which helps preserve resources. A small group begins to protest this mandate, since they’ll be colonizing soon anyway and so there shouldn’t be much strain on the resources. This protest evolves into not colonizing as it’s unethical.
Which presents a problem. As a reader, I understand that the ship has very limited resources, so people can’t live out their natural lives. New generations need to be born and with each birth there must be a death. Also, if the people decide not to colonize, how do they expect to be able to support a growing population if they get rid of the death mandate? This wasn’t answered in the novel, or if it was, I missed the explanation.
Other minor problems nagged at me as well. Landing was dangerous because they couldn’t get the probes to send information about microbes and whatnot. Political forces demanded landing parties go anyway and people were selected on the whims of the Governor. They were all tested for agoraphobia because they’d lived on a ship for something like five generations, therefore, people weren’t accustomed to open spaces. Some of the people who tested poorly were still sent down. That makes no sense. In addition, if the elders are slated to die anyway, why not send them down to the planet? They’d worked up until their 70th birthday, so work was a huge part of their lives anyway, and they could be useful in testing the atmospheric conditions and survivability of the planet.
Another minor issue that nagged at me was the media. The ship had televised news and entertainment. Why didn’t they have a science channel as well? As a reader, I’d expect that in the later generations, a timeslot would be allocated for information about the planet.
While the bulk of the novel takes place before arrival, there is just enough information at the end to explain why the probes weren’t sending information. But I felt like the author had a really good concept that was only explored at the tail end of the book. Yes, this novel is more about the struggle as they reach the planet, but in the end, the reader discovers that both the planet and the ship have gained a kind of cognizance. Now THAT would be an interesting book: how the ship behaves to protect the crew, how the planet behaves to protect itself, and how humans bung all that up. But I suppose that could all be written in a sequel.
Overall, the novel was all right. Good enough for me to finish it, but frustrating that (what I felt was) the best part was at the end and not really explored.
Should Be Writing 