Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"did I had an extremely expensive wife - she would see a new car that she liked and just buy it... under California law I was bound to buy her debts. I think I turned out 16 novels in five years."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Generation Ship | ||
| A spacecraft that carries a complete social group over many years. |
This is the first use of "generation ship" in fiction; see caveats below.
| ‘What I can't understand is why, if the Builders had perfected suspended animation, they had to have personnel at all. Why not staff the Ship with men and women in deep-freeze, send off the Ship, and let them waken when they had arrived?’‥
 (The star ship from 'Star Ship' by E.C. Tubb) ‘First, there are two ways by which men can reach the stars. One is by suspended animation as you have suggested, the other is by generation ship, which this is. We have combined both and so avoided the weaknesses inherent in either. The generation ship depends on new blood replacing the old, but the danger is that the new blood will forget what it should remember. Sixteen generations is a long time, Jay. Even with continual use of educational tapes it is still hard for some people to accept the fact that the Ship is nothing but a metal can drifting in the void. To them the Ship is the universe and they just can't imagine anything possibly being bigger. The Deep-freeze method is just as bad. Then the personnel have to rely wholly on automatic machinery, even as we do, but they are far more vulnerable than a generation ship could ever be. And there is another thing. We still aren't certain that they will be fertile after deep-freeze. The animals are, the men and women should be, but no one has ever rested in suspended animation for more than three hundred years before. It was a chance we dared not take.’ |
| Technovelgy from Star Ship,
by E.C. Tubb. Published by New Worlds Science Fiction in 1955 Additional resources -
|
Samuel R. Delany uses this term in his 1965 story Ballad of Beta-2:
Compare with the city ship from Star of Wonder (1953), by Julian May. The New Frontiers from Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children was effectively a generation ship - except everyone lived so long! Also, see the multi-generation space voyage from The Return of the Murians (1936) by Nat Schachner and slowboat from The Ethics of Madness (1967) by Larry Niven.
Robert H. Goddard was perhaps the first to write about multi-generational interstellar voyages in his 1918 essay "The Last Migration". He described the death of the Sun and the need for an interstellar ark. The crew would face the centuries of travel by sleeping and would be awakened when they reach another star system.
Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky described the need for multiple generations of passengers in his 1928 essay "The Future of Earth and Mankind". A space colony called Noah's Ark travels for thousands of years.
"they left Earth for the stars in their ships early in 2242,
expecting to cruise through space for twelve generations before
reaching an uncertain destination. They'd been gone only sixty
years when the hyperspace drive became a large-scale reality. By
the time the ten remaining generation-ships arrived in the Leffer system, Earth had already established a going-business of trade
and cultural exchange, already a hundred or so years old, with
scores of planetary systems.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Star Ship
More Ideas
and Technology by E.C. Tubb
Tech news articles related to Star Ship
Tech news articles related to works by E.C. Tubb
Generation Ship-related
news articles:
- Spaceships Should Last So Long
| Is China Mining Helium-3 On The Moon's Farside? |
| Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space |
| Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic |
| Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
