Novel om ett fartyg med långdistansgenerering

5

Jag söker efter namnet på en roman som jag läste som tonåring, tillbaka i 1970-talet eller 1980-talet. Det handlade om ett generationsfartyg som hade två kaptener, en för resan ut och en för återvändan, men den första kaptenen skulle inte ge upp befäl och använde den andra kaptenen som ett sätt att se till att alla besättningsmedlemmar stannade mänsklig. Så han skulle ha den andra kaptenen som dödades om och om igen, så att varje gång det skulle vara som han bara vaknade från cryo. Den andra kaptenen har inget minne om vem han är, men börjar långsamt avlägsna mysteriet.

    
uppsättning Judy G. 17.10.2015 14:39

1 svar

8

En chans att detta skulle bli The Dark Beyond the Stars av Frank M. Robinson? Wikipedia visar en matchning på några viktiga detaljer:

The ship has slowly shrunk from cannibalizing sealed off sections for parts and breaking apart from centuries of wear; meanwhile, the crew has dwindled from generations of selective breeding. The Captain wants to take the Astron to a section of the galaxy where stars are more numerous and older where planets are more likely to harbor life, but to do so they would have to cross the empty space between spiral arms they call "the Dark". Most members of the crew know that they will not survive the journey since it would take several centuries to cross and the ship would not make it with its current rate of attrition of their closed ecological system. But Captain Kusaka, who is immortal and obsessed with exploration, does not heed to the warnings and will do whatever it takes to complete the mission. As a result, the crew secretly try to plan a mutiny to seize control of the ship and return to Earth, the only place they know that harbors life.

Sparrow refuses to join the mutiny with his friends against Kusaka, but is torn since he knows they won't survive the trip and that chances of finding life are almost nonexistent, thus making the mission futile but the Captain won't accept it. Things change when Sparrow slowly discovers that he is also immortal like the Captain, and that he has lived previous "lives" on the ship as the same man but with different names and his memories of every previous identity are erased every generation by orders of the Captain. He learns that he originally volunteered for the role to be the mirror for every crew to "remember what its like to be human"; since they've been isolated from the rest of humanity over the centuries the crew has formed their own collective-mind culture that's overly benign and incapable of harm since they regard life as the most precious thing in existence (also makes them reluctant to mutiny). Sparrow also learns that he was the first mutineer and Kusaka erased his memories to keep the crew in line and Sparrow from seizing control of the ship since the Astron's central computer only responds to the minds of the immortal crew members, and should they be removed the ship would not function and would drift through space forever.

Den här boken har tidigare blivit ombedd och IDed av user14111 i den här frågan:

Försöker hitta en roman om ett multigenerational ship crossing space

Även om OP i den frågan ännu inte har accepterat svaret.

    
svaret ges 17.10.2015 16:02