There’s something about generation ships that doesn’t really apply to me as a motif. (There’s a nice little shout-out to Galileo’s trials and tribulations with the Catholic Church.) This plot was executed most memorably for me in “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky,” an episode in the third season of the original Star Trek. Anyone, like Hugh, who challenges this worldview is accused of heresy. For all intents and purposes, the Ship is now the universe. Heinlein immediately seizes on the possibility that something could go so disastrously wrong during the voyage such that the entire crew forgets it is on a ship. Orphans of the Sky is one of the ur–generation ship tales. Oh, science fiction publishing, you are so fun. Now we have two related 1940s novellae fixed-up into a single novel in the 1960s. Not marred by notes or highlighting.Second Heinlein collection in this book (the first being The Man Who Sold the Moon). But could he make his people believe him before it was to late? Could he make them believe that he must be allowed to fly the ship? a copy that has been read, but remains in excellent condition. And he learned the true nature of the Ship and its mission between the stars. Were they evil incarnate, or merely a divine check on the population, keeping humanity from expanding past the capacity of the Ship to support? Then Hugh was captured by the muties and met their leader (or leaders), Joe-Jim, with two heads on one body.
Of course, there were the muties, grotesquely deformed parodies of humans, who lurked in the upper reaches of the Ship where gravity was weaker. Indeed, how could the Ship move, since its miles and miles of metal corridors were all there was of creation? Science knew that the Ship was all the Universe, and as long as the sacred Convertor was fed, the lights would continue to glow and the air would flow, and the Creator's Plan would be fulfilled. But he also understood this was actually allegory for a voyage to spiritual perfection. Hugh had been taught that, according to the ancient sacred writings, the Ship was on a voyage to faraway Centaurus. A fix-up consisting of the novelette Universe (1941) and the novella Common Sense (1941).
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