Non-Stop

I actually loved it (except the ending, mixed feelings about it), even though it is rather an exuberant and hyperactive book than a really good one. IT IS though scifi in its most classic sense (there are lush dangerous jungles! adventures! kidnappings of women and tough men growling, even mutant bandits! dazers and lasers fights! rats on sleds armed with swords - wait, what!?!)... and a captivating one at that.

My review of the book: [b:Non-Stop 384579 Non-Stop Brian W. Aldiss https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1321611598s/384579.jpg 2268003] by [a:Brian W. Aldiss 33297 Brian W. Aldiss https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1333457329p2/33297.jpg]. As ever, I'm not going to provide a summary of the story itself, rather this review will highlight some of the themes and aspects of the book which stood out for me personally.Firstly, to understand the early weird chapters of the novel the reader has to have an understanding of the context in which the story is set. Most of this is on the back cover blurb (and the various covers published over the years kind of give the game away) but to reiterate, the characters are all descendants of the passengers and crew on a generation starship. The first generation have first-hand experience of Earth, the last generation will never see Earth and will only know their destination; all the generations in between will only ever know the starship. For them, the confines of the starship is their world. However, in Non-Stop the starship has had been involved in an accident and is now flying uncontrolled through space. The ship has been overrun by vegetation, the population don't know that they are on a starship and since it is the only world they know they have slowly regressed into a more primal tribal existence. Also, due to the extended length of time involved on the journey certain creatures have had the opportunity to evolve with a higher level of intelligence.The sociological situation of one of the tribes, the Greens, was particularly interesting. They accept the material world around them and their situation; they don't question their existence. They live in the boundaries of a section of the starship called “the Quarters”; the Quarters are their small part of the small world of the ship itself. Each day is about survival and clearing away the vegetation which invades their life. They have little or no time to contemplate the past or future. They spend their time existing in the present. The habits, routines and social structures they have created reflect the environment they find themselves in and allow them to organise their lives in a way which maintains a degree of stability, reason and contentment. However, they are ruthless: for example, in their approach to children. They kill their offspring if they have mutations and detachment from parents is conditioned from an early age. The reason for this is not made clear but the religion they have adopted has roots in Freudian psychology. This psychological link is further evidenced by the fact that honesty along with eye-contact is avoided and the customary greeting is “Expansion to your Ego,” which is responded to with the phrase “at your expense”: these are all explicit manifestations of aspects of life which in normal society are normally left unarticulated.Roy Complain the main protagonist in the story harbours thoughts about an alternative way of life; an existential yearning to understand the world and his place in it. These desires are realised when Marapper a priest who sermonized about individual self-preservation, gives him the chance to try to get to the control room, to pass through the almost legendary section of the ship called the Forwards and to possibly try to meet the Captain; the person who is in control of the whole ship. The journey questions his beliefs, his worldview, why he exists and who he can rely on and trust.So in summary: I believe that the book is trying to say the following; we blindly accept our small piece of the world with little awareness of what is happening elsewhere. We create structures and routines to allow us to live as comfortably as possible, including implementing activities which condition social norms, certain worldviews and even the repression of certain thoughts and ideologies. Some of us may yearn for a different way of life, and may even pursue this by trying to find and follow a “Captain”; someone or something who can make sense of the world around us and get us to a certain destination, one which we perceive is important. However, in reality this person doesn't exist and making a journey to realise this is actually more important in terms of self discovery.

I like 1950s SF, for the most part. This book was a disappointment.
It's a little uncomfortable with what it's supposed to be. It can't decide whether to be a space adventure perhaps aimed at younger readers or a moral lecture aimed at their parents.
Where it falls down is in its rambling. For the first hundred pages we follow the unlikeable protagonist as he roams the ship and there begins to be a bit of a problem with viewpoint. The character is uncertain about how large the ship is and so is the story - at some points travel between decks is something achieved by dropping through a trapdoor and at others times it takes a day's journey with packs of provisions.
Then, out of nowhere, the semi-realistic setting is shattered when a bunch of intelligent rats stroll into a scene towing a caged, telepathic rabbit they are using to extract information from prisoners. And this has no bearing on any of the rest plot, before or after, but is the first of many more WTF moments.
At one point the characters find an ancient swimming pool and, thinking back to books they've read, they decide that it must be the sea. I'm fine with that. As a reader, I like knowing more than the characters. But why make it one throw-away line? Take these sort of comedy mistakes and use them to pad out the otherwise fairly boring trudge through corridor after corridor. Otherwise they're pointless.
And they've never mentioned reading books like that before. In fact, I'm pretty sure only the priest could read earlier in the book. And later some of these characters are revealed to be from off the ship in the first place, with all of Earth's knowledge available to them.
The inconsistency and wasted opportunity becomes infuriating after a while.

Wikipedia tells me this was Aldiss' first novel. I like some of his other stuff.