Starship

Although the prologue of this book starts out just after the first book (Signals), it quickly jumps forward some 200 years. There we find ourselves on a generation ship known as Home. The ship is an attempt to spread humanity far enough that a single calamity can not wipe it out. Through the eyes of some of the inhabitants (crew and residents) we see some of the problems associated with and inherent in travel by way of generation ship. The ship is a closed system and at this point in time everyone is aware that they are just a transition phase. They have been born on the ship and they will never see its fruition. It takes special planning and propaganda to keep the residents as productive as they need to be to keep the ship functioning for the unknown future generations. We see a number of problems crop up both big and small and how the characters handle the situations. The book is quite different from the first as there is very little of the politicking and power plays that made up so much of the first volume. But although quite different in tone, it is still a good story. The author tends to close chapter sections with foreshadowing comments (i.e. He didn't realize how wrong he was) that keep the reader wanting to know more. A nice technique that keeps the book moving right to the very end.

Kevin D. Randle is well-known as a leading figure (and prolific author) in ufology: spearheading the search for answers at Roswell, examining the case history of other reported UFO crashes, asking tough (and sometimes unpopular) questions about the alien abduction phenomenon, and generally examining UFO evidence in as large a context as possible. I was surprised to discover his entry into the world of science fiction, but The Exploration Chronicles is proving to be an interesting series that differs wildly from my expectations. Signals, the first novel, suffered from a number of flaws, especially in terms of characterization, but maintained my interest as it explored Earth's first contact with an intelligent race of aliens. The ending was almost shockingly anticlimactic, and I figured Randle was saving his good stuff for the second novel. Now we would finally get a good look at these elusive aliens - or so I thought. Randle surprised me, however, by taking an entirely new direction here in Starship; since his UFO research has dealt primarily with our reactions to contact with an alien intelligence, I expected that subject to be the continuing theme of this second novel. Instead, Randle has done the opposite and cast humans in the role of an alien race seeking a new home on a new planet. The heart of this novel lies in the social interaction and political continuity of life aboard the starship, and to my surprise Randle's exploration of social and psychological themes actually succeeds much better than his first novel's overreliance on science to the detriment of his characters. The writing in this book is a significant improvement over that found in Signals, and I am actually quite excited about the future of this series. After a brief prologue featuring the two main characters from the original novel, Starship jumps more than two centuries into the future. The Starship Alpha, called Home by its thousands of residents, is well on its way into deep space in search of a planet suitable for colonization. The mission's main purpose is to ensure that, should disaster strike Earth, the human race would continue to survive. The original colonists are long dead, replaced by their descendants who were borne into a mission they may not have wanted; none of them has ever been outside the spaceship itself. Life onboard the ship is highly regulated and controlled; indeed, a futuristic breed of socialism keeps everything and everyone productively docile. The residents have been bred, with the aid of genetic engineering, to look and act alike for the most part; each person has his assigned role in the society and does it without complaint. Last names have even been dropped in favor of numbers indicating when each person was born in relation to the time of the ship's launch. Oh, a few individuals have doubts and question the facts they are given by the computers, and a few even exhibit troublesome behavior, but such problematic residents are deal

After the contact was made between the alien ship and the earth, the leaders of the world decided that even if the planet was invaded, mankind would survive. Huge spaceships, nine miles long and five miles wide, were built and sent into outer space looking for worlds outside the solar system that the inhabitants of Alpha can colonize. Over time, the good of the whole supplanted individuality.Most residents were fed psychotropic drugs to keep them docile and any deviation from what is considered normal behavior is swiftly dealt with. Even young children were indoctrinated from the time they were little. One day the scientists observe a blight in one of the agricultural pods and it is spreading to other pods. Unless a planet can be found that they can survive and thrive on, the residents of the starship will die in eighteen months.Generations of suppressed rage led to the conspiracy concerning the food supply. People feel outraged that they were brainwashed and drugged into thinking along the party line. Once the food supply was destroyed, chaos became the norm except for those who were frantically trying to find a way out of the mess those in authority put them in.STARSHIP is a fascinating novel that shows what living in a closed environment means. Kevin D. Randle is a natural storyteller who shows both sides of the issue leaving it to the reader to make up their minds if such extreme measures in relation to the residents were warranted.Harriet Klausner

Starship is the second novel in the Exploration Chronicles, following Signals. In the previous volume, astronomers determined that signals coming from space were being emitted by an FTL spacecraft. The Earth alliance sent out a newly developed long-range spaceship to meet the incoming starship, but the alien vessel veered off after detecting it and headed back out to deep space. The visit of the alien vessel drove an international effort to produce Human starships.In this novel, Thomas Hackett, now promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, heads the team producing the first generation ship, The Home. Susan Bakker is part of his team. They celebrate the launch of the ship and then go back to work on more generation ships.Two and a half centuries later, The Home is having problems with unrest among the residents. Using a regime of drugs and conditioning, they manage to suppress most unruliness. Unfortunately, some residents manage to evade the surveillance devices and attack the food supply. The Home is soon finding itself with severe problems and needs a new supply of organics to make up their losses.The ruling council sends out ships to search nearby systems for habitable planets to live on while the ship is being purged of poisons. All the search teams report only uninhabitable worlds with one exception: one team has discovered a habitable moon that is already inhabited. Of course, it is off-limits under the original rules for colonization, but the destruction of the last healthy crop leads to a temporary change of priorities and the ship heads for the moon.In this story, several young people find themselves gaining an unprecedented degree of freedom as the drugs and conditioning wear off during the emergency. They find themselves able to think the unthinkable and do the undoable. Somehow that makes them better survivors in their new conditions.While this story is based on an old idea dating back to Heinlein's Universe, the author inserts some new twists and adds a touch of alien contact. The action is rather slow at first and the interaction between characters is muted by the drugs and conditioning. Moreover, the generation ship is about as exciting as any small town in the middle of the week. Nevertheless, this story is an adequate bridge to the next installment.Recommended for Randle fans and anyone who enjoys stories of people in strange environments and conditions.