Orphans of the Sky

Orphans of the Sky

First US edition (publ. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1964)
Author	Robert A. Heinlein
Cover artist	Irv Docktor
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Victor Gollancz Ltd (UK)
Publication date	1963
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Paperback)
ISBN	9780671318451
OCLC	751436515

Orphans of the Sky is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988), consisting of two parts: "Universe" (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1941) and its sequel, "Common Sense" (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1941). "Universe" was republished alone in 1951 as a 10¢ Dell paperback book. The two novellas were first published together in book form in 1963. The work presents one of the earliest fictional depictions of a generation ship — an interstellar "ark" travelling at sub-light speeds and requiring many generations to reach a "nearby" star. In this case the target is Proxima Centauri, the nearest star.

Plot summary

Part I - Universe

A brief prologue states that after launching in the year 2119, the Proxima Centauri Expedition, the first attempt at interstellar travel, was lost and its fate remains unknown...

Hugh Hoyland is a young man of insatiable curiosity and energy. His society ("the Crew") inhabit and maintain their home ("the Ship") as a semi-feudal community consisting of two classes. The first are the "Scientists" (really, priests) who maintain both technical and spiritual traditions. The second are the illiterate "peasants" who farm animals and raise crops by hydroponic means. Hugh is selected as an apprentice Scientist. The Scientists ritualistically feed trash (including people) into a mass-to-energy "Converter" to generate power, but remain largely ignorant of its functions. So far as anyone knows, the Ship is the entire universe. The Scientists have access to some ancient texts, produced by their ancestors, which refer to the Ship "moving" and being on a voyage, or "Trip", to a destination known cryptically as "Far Centaurus". But these concepts are interpreted as religious metaphors and literal belief in them is considered heresy. The Crew are ruled by a "Captain", the current one being an obese, nasty incompetent. Crew members occupy the "lower (heavy-weight) decks" and seldom venture to the "upper (low-weight) decks", which are the domain of the barbarous, cannibalistic "muties" (the name is short for "mutants" or "mutineers", no one seems to know which). Several decks in between are uninhabited and considered neutral ground. If any muties (sometimes identifiable by monstrous deformities) are born among the Crew, they are killed at birth.

The 1951 Dell printing of "Universe"

One day, on a hunt for muties, Hugh is captured by them. He barely avoids getting eaten by the microcephalic dwarf Bobo and instead becomes the slave of Joe-Jim Gregory, the two-headed leader of a powerful mutie gang. Joe and Jim have separate identities, but both are highly intelligent and have come to a crude understanding of the Ship's true nature. They take Hugh up to "no-weight" (the axis and core of the Ship) and into the Ship's "Control Room" (a kind of stellarium where a realistic simulation of the outside celestial sphere is projected). Hugh is initially overwhelmed but recovers and later studies ancient texts that were not available to the Crew. After much deliberation he comes to a fuller understanding of the true nature of the Ship than anyone else. It emerges that, after many centuries, the Ship — which is in reality a gigantic, cylindrical starship called the Vanguard — is still cruising without guidance through interstellar space after a mutiny killed most of the officers. The descendants of the survivors then lapsed into a state of superstitious ignorance, having forgotten the purpose and nature of their existence.

Now convinced of the Ship's true purpose, Hugh persuades Joe-Jim to complete the mission of colonization since he notices that there is a nearby star that Joe-Jim has observed growing larger over the years. Intent on the mission, he returns to the lower levels of the Ship to convince others to help him, but is arrested by his former boss, the Chief Engineer Bill Ertz, and sentenced to death. He is viewed as either insane or a previously unrecognized mutant; he was a borderline case at birth, with a head viewed as too large.

Hugh persuades an old friend, Alan Mahoney, to enlist Joe-Jim's gang in rescuing him. He then shows the captured Bill and Alan the long-abandoned Control Room and its view of the stars.

Part II - Common Sense

Convinced, Bill then enlists the captain's aide, Phineas Narby, to Hugh's crusade.

Inspired by one of Joe-Jim's favorite books, The Three Musketeers, they manufacture swords superior to the daggers that everyone else has. They overthrow the captain, install Narby in his place, and embark on a campaign to bring the entire Ship under their control.

However, Narby never believed Hugh and played along only to gain power. Once in control, he sets out to eliminate the muties. Joe is killed in the fighting, but Jim sacrifices himself to hold off their pursuers long enough for Hugh, Bill, Alan, and their wives to get to a highly automated lifeboat. Hugh manages to land on the habitable moon of a gas giant. The colonists disembark and uneasily explore their alien surroundings.

Reception

In 1956, Damon Knight said, "Nobody has ever improved on Universe, although a good many reckless people have tried, because Heinlein said it all."

In 1964, Avram Davidson described the newly repackaged Orphans of the Sky as "a modern classic" and praised "the magnitude and magnificence of Orphans' concepts" but expressed disappointment in "the limitations of its conclusion."

In 1966, Algis Budrys said, "Many hands have worked at improving Heinlein's impeccable statement of this theme", with none succeeding until James White's The Watch Below.

In 1980, cultural historian and scholar H. Bruce Franklin described "Universe" as ...

...a classic presentation of that critical problem, the impenetrable limits environment places around consciousness, a theme crucial not only for Heinlein and for such science-fiction masterpieces as E.A. Abbott's Flatland, Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and "The Great Dark", Jorge Luis Borges' "The Library of Babel" and Christopher Priest's The Inverted World, but for all modern industrial society as technological and social revolutions constantly change the human environment. In the epistemological laboratory presented by "Universe" neither the traditional beliefs of the present rulers nor the hard-headed pragmatism of a dissident rational bloc who accept only immediate facts can comprehend the stupendous truth of the real universe that lies outside.... The delusory world of the Ship in "Universe" is presented as a convincing possibility in a rigorously controlled science fiction in which true science offers the only way out.

Franklin dismisses the sequel, "Common Sense", as "more a minor tale of adventure" concluding with a "highly improbable" denouement. He further faults its "flagrantly derogatory treatment of women".

Links to other Heinlein stories

A paragraph at the start of the novel shows an excerpt from "The Romance of Modern Astrography," explaining that the ship was part of the "Proxima Centauri Expedition, sponsored by the Jordan Foundation in 2119" (A timeline produced by Heinlein to link different stories in his Future History places the launch of the Vanguard in the early 22nd century.) A discovered ship's log begins in June 2172, a few days before the mutiny breaks out.

In Heinlein's 1973 novel Time Enough for Love, the Vanguard is briefly mentioned as the sister ship of New Frontiers, which was commandeered by the Howard Families in the 1958 novel Methuselah's Children. It is revealed that the vessel had been bound for Proxima Centauri but never landed colonists there. The Vanguard has been discovered, with its crew long dead because of an unexplained failure in its mechanisms, and its records destroyed or illegible. Its path is traced back, and the descendants of Hugh's people are found, flourishing as highly intelligent savages on a planet which scientists dub "Pitcairn Island". Another reference to Heinlein's Future History is a passage describing Joe-Jim's enthusiasm for the works of "Rhysling, the blind singer of the spaceways," a poet and the central character of the 1947 Heinlein story "The Green Hills of Earth".

Radio adaptation

"Universe" was also performed as a radio play on the NBC Radio Network programs Dimension X (on November 26, 1951) and X Minus One (on May 15, 1955). Those versions have several drastic changes to the story, especially in their conclusions in which Hugh is killed, showing the crew of the Vanguard the true nature of the Ship.

Scientific plausibility

Two-headed humans — known as dicephalic parapagus twins — do exist, and are one variation of conjoined twins. Their dual brains, however, do not alternately share control of the shared body's limbs and other organs (as in the book), but are wired (innervated) separately to the right and left sides of the body respectively.

The physics of the Ship's artificial gravity is also correct: It spins to simulate gravity, which is absent at the centre. The ship's "Converter" reflects an early 1940s viewpoint of atomic power, with atoms of any element "ripped apart" in an unspecified manner.

The notion of a giant planet with a habitable moon went against theories of planetary formation as they stood before the discovery of "hot Jupiter" planets. It was thought that planets large enough to have an Earth-sized moon would form only above the "snowline," too far from the star for life. It is now believed that such worlds can migrate inwards, and habitable moons seem possible. The existence of exomoons has not been confirmed, but there are candidates.

See also

• Non-Stop, by Brian W. Aldiss (titled Starship in its U.S. release)
• Captive Universe, by Harry Harrison
• "Proxima Centauri", by Murray Leinster
• "The Oceans are Wide", a story by Frank M. Robinson about a generation ship whose inhabitants have not forgotten its purpose
• The Book of the Long Sun, by Gene Wolfe
• "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", an episode of the original Star Trek with a similar premise
• "Mission of the Darians", an episode of Space: 1999 with a similar premise
• The Starlost, a Canadian-produced science fiction television series devised by writer Harlan Ellison and broadcast in 1973
• Marrow, a novel by American author Robert Reed published in 2000.
• Pandorum, a 2009 German-British science fiction film
• "If the Stars Should Appear", an episode of science fiction television series The Orville written by Seth MacFarlane and broadcast on September 28, 2017
• Metamorphosis Alpha, a role-playing game by James M. Ward

External links

• Orphans of the Sky title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Orphans of the Sky at Open Library
• "Universe" and "Common Sense" on the Internet Archive