I rarely leave negative reviews but I have to strong warn readers away from this book. It's poorly written, the characters act without real thought or motivation other than being set in a general direction and marched along in the book, and the final chapters of the book have an actually compelling world and concept but the author is unable to adequately argue his points against 'colonialism". Not to mention that 90% of this book is trade unionist garbage. Two of his main characters are left-wing terrorists, and not actual freedom fighters, that ignore the majority opinion in favor of violence that champion their beliefs. There's even a left-wing January 6th that's successful that the author champions. Heck, one of these characters even correctly notes he doesn't even really have his own beliefs but is a puppet of his daughter's Marxism.

And the 'antagonists'? A police officer and the elected leader of the ship. Oh wow, really tough there.

Oh, and the scientist might be one of the worst written champions of the importance of scientific rigor. For someone who is supposedly smart (though never actually has any real break throughs and is later the only character to talk to the deus ex machina at the end of the book (also a VERY poor way of writing)) she abandons her husband (who she claims to love but we never see this, and the husband is written as very emotional) for SCIENCE.

0/10.

Generation Ship by Michael Mammay- The Generation ship Voyager set out from Earth Two Hundred Fifty years ago and is finally nearing its destination, a planet named Promssia. It’s 97% similar to the atmosphere of Earth, so everything should all right. However the 3% difference can be the difference between life and death. Also forces aboard the ship are tied in a struggle for dominance in the ship. Some don’t want to land while others seek to secure their power over all. All this plays out in a tense dramatic story that’s hard to put down. Yes, there are those generation ship clichés, but handled very well. Thanks NetGalley for this ARC,

This one was interesting. It is set on a generation ship that has been in progress for hundreds of years and many human generations. The Charter dictates their way of life--and as they are nearing the planet, there are certain things "necessary to this way of life" that people think should change. One incident leads to some turmoil, and the story follows several different key people on the ship as they are trying to complete the mission--or keep in power. It moved between several characters and I didn't get overly attached to any of them--except the ones I HATED because they were so rash/selfish (but that was the point of them). It had a lot interesting to say about how policy can dictate things for various motivations that not everyone understands. I wish there was a little more on the planet, but it was an interesting character-driven story.

I really enjoyed this book. The world building is amazing. The ease of getting to know the main characters felt like a natural progression. It was not hard to follow at all. There was not a lot of unnecessary language to mar the story. I would love to read another novel in this universe.
I would happily read anything by this author. Thanks to NetGalley and the. publisher for this ARC

Michael Mammay's Generation Ship, set on a spaceship nearing the end of its 250-year voyage, elevates his craft to new heights. While this book appears to be a space odyssey on the surface, the setting provides an essentially closed system that allows the ever-changing politics and power dynamics of the ship’s inhabitants to take center stage. The result is something that transcends space opera and becomes as much relevant social commentary as it is cautionary tale.

The story follows five strong-willed people, all with different priorities and intentions, and Mammay takes great care to capture the power struggles, clashes of interests, concealed motives, and communication breakdowns at play. He seamlessly integrates broader themes that resonate with today's world, delivering a tale that is not just a vision of the future, but a mirror reflecting our current experiences. This is sci-fi at its most relevant: technology may change, the world may change, but people don’t.

Also of note is the excellent and meticulously constructed scientific scaffolding on which the story rests. The ship itself fascinates—we learn about the gravity systems, engineering and computer systems, and agricultural decks. And that’s all before arrival at the planet. What happens beyond that is, in a word, riveting, but I won't spoil it.

An easy five stars, and I can’t wait for this author’s next book.

For almost 250 years the colony ship has been on its way to Promissa, an earth-like planet detected in a distant system. Generations have been born, lived, and died during the long voyage. The huge ship has a crew of thousands, governed by the original ship's charter. The story begins as the ship nears Promissa and sends out electronic probes to test the atmosphere and surface of the planet. Every probe fails within seconds of arrival. It's impossible to collect information to determine if the planet is safe or deadly. When this news spreads throughout the ships population, anxiety, unrest, and near riots threaten the safety of all aboard.
Chapters are told from five different viewpoints, but each is so well written the reader gets to know and understand them all. My favorite was George, a big, quiet-natured farmer who becomes the reluctant leader of a rebel uprising. I also liked Sheila, an earnest. concerned scientist who finds herself torn between her family and her job. Sheila is used and manipulated by Jared, the ship president, who sincerely wants to do what's right for the ship. But Jared is too much of a politician, and others try to manipulate him, including Mark, an ambitious security officer. Eddie is a maintenance worker and an expert hacker, but she dreams of being an engineer. The suspenseful interwoven stories of these five crew members kept me turning pages well into the night.

You know, when I picked up the book, I wanted to love it and the shifting POV did keep the story moving along, however, by the time I got to the end (with the big reveal), I, sadly, was just not as interested as I could have been.

I really enjoyed this story. There's a lot of political intrigue and societal upheaval on a generation ship on a voyage to find a viable destination for 250 years that has come upon a planet that may sustain human life. It was a pretty exciting read, told through five narrators: a scientist, a politician, a farmer, a technical engineer and a security officer. Each had an influence on how things played out and strong voices. Mammay has a way with character dialogue and that made for a fun and engaging read.

Seeing how life functioned on the ship in the day-to-day was really well done and one of my favourite parts of the story. From agriculture to recycling (even the deceased human kind because that would be important). Conditioning and training for people for the time when they all see sky and stand on a planet for the first time. Just so many details that I enjoyed having been considered and characters working through big and small things. Even small things on a generation ship make a difference. Also, so much of the conflict is the push-pull between community and individual benefit. And each community splintered into different factions with different needs when problem-solving was required. Do you never change the Charter of governance on the ship which has stood for 250 years or throw it out and start again? Amend it? How? There was so much the characters had to decide and it made me think of current real-world conflicts and questions. The characters figure out how to see their way through and that made me glad. In our own way on this planet we're stuck together with no other place to go that is liveable so maybe we'll figure out how to collaborate too.

It wasn't predictable and moved at a good clip (a good thing for a book just beyond 600 pages). I really liked how everything ended and surprisingly could check in on these characters again if there's more the author wants to write.

I'd only read one other book by Mammay before this one but I'd enjoyed that one so much, I was very excited to see this was upcoming and I'm very glad to have read it. Thoroughly enjoyable. Recommended.


Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an Advance Reader Copy.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the story of an earth based ship that has been traveling for generations to reach a potential new home world. Told alternately by 5 different characters, each with their own desires as the ship finally gets within a few months of a new home planet Promissa.

As the ship nears the end of it’s 250 year trip and the other planet is tantalizingly close -most of the long range probes begin to lose contact when they arrive in the atmosphere. What does it mean? Everyone has an opinion, but no one knows.

As in all science fiction the story isn’t about the science. Its about the people. The motives are as varied as any political system, desire for power, to keep power, a better job, a promotion. We have the Governor trying to lead people to finish the mission, the police officer who wants to do something meaningful, the reluctant rebel leader, the hacker who never fit in, and the scientist who has to choose between career or family. All told though the lens of space.
75% of the story takes place on the ship as each character forms and breaks alliances to get advantage. I honestly found it rather tiresome, but the last 25% involving the planet was terrific. I wish more of the story had been planet based vs ship based. Im glad I stuck with it.

This felt like an interesting subcategorization of a traditional space Opera. This came off more like a character study, with the backdrop being the generation ship, then the traditional sort of adventurous space opera. Being character-driven, the story was pretty slow, because the bulk of the story is everyone's backstories and how they intertwine. I didn't dislike this, but I was really interested by the premise, so I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't get to spend more time unraveling secrets of their journey. Overall, I did really enjoy this though, even being a bit slower and not quite what I was expecting, this was still incredibly well written and all the characters were really interesting and compelling.

I received an ARC from netgalley for an honest review.

This book is a character study of politics rather than a traditional space opera. It has interesting characters, with a backdrop of a ship travelling through space for generations to colonize a new planet. There isn't a lot of backstory as to why, just hints of some group of scientists and a vision.

It delves into the grey side of each set of characters, all with desires and motives, a lot of them with good intentions.

I enjoyed the book and would recommend it for people looking for a slower paced, character driven story. Some of the themes were a bit jumbled together, but the end result was well worth a read.

Often I choose books on NetGalley because I've heard of the book before, or I've read other works by the author, or they catch me with the "fans of Arkady Martine and Ann Leckie will love this book" (only sometimes true). But sometimes I try a book that has nothing in particular other than an interesting premise and a good feeling about it. That's how I went into Generation Ship; with no expectations and very little idea of what to look forward to. What I found was a fantastic political tale, told from five(?) perspectives representing a huge range of experiences, desires, and priorities as a ship full of people who were born and lived their whole life on the ship face the possibility of arriving at their destination just as political instability breaks out, starting with pushback against the policy of mandatory end of life at 75. Mammay does an excellent job showing all the facets of the situation from different viewpoints; it's like a chess game with far more than two players. In addition to political intrigue on the ship, the planet plays a large role as people begin to wonder: Even if they can go to the planet, should they?

I'm a huge Star Trek fan, and the setting reminded me of something where the Enterprise crew (Picard era) would pop in, observe the political situation, have a lot of ethical and moral debates about what to do, and ultimately make a decision that would greatly impact the ship. Except in Generation Ship, there's no Federation crew swooping in to save or destroy them; the crew has to do the long-term, dangerous, messy work of building and rebuilding a society themselves, and it is a pleasure to watch through the eyes of characters who are sometimes likable and sometimes terribly unlikable, but who all feel like fully fleshed out people whose lives you get to peek in on as they handle the biggest challenges of their lives.

I enjoyed Generation Ship so much that I plan to buy a copy for myself, and I've already recommended my partner (who also loves sci-fi and Star Trek) read it when it gets here!

I’m rating this four stars despite my many reservations about it I was intrigued enough to finish. I won’t finish books that fail to engage me on the principle that life’s too short for wasting time on them.

I’ll get right to it. The book opens with a generation ship having traveled for 250 years at .11 light speed or maybe 25 light years distance, about to finish its journey by arriving at a planet that seems promising for a human colony. The tension in the book is generated by a ‘highly improbable’. The maybe 2,000 people aboard have not been briefed about the pre-colonization procedures upon arrival. Really? That they aren’t so briefed causes the ship’s company to lose the sense of a shared goal. We instead get increasing opinion fragmentation. The result is that a long 75% of the book is concerned with an office politics-like narrative well before anybody even tries to make planetfall.

The story is told through the eyes of several protagonists who we get to know well. Unfortunately for the book’s plot, this prevents the reader from choosing good and bad guys to root for or against. We know all of them and their often understandable goals all too well to dislike or like any one of them.

I was persistently annoyed by the dialog which is 2023 Millennial meaning it’s laced with f**ks and sh*ts. This is bad enough in dialog but the narration also is heavily laced with these words. So we get phrases like, “She woke up feeling like sh*t”. I don’t mind these words per se, but do when, as in this novel, they’re used as general intensifiers. Toward the middle of the book, we get a rash of “sucks” too – almost as tedious. Here are hundreds of years in the future with people sounding as annoyingly simple-minded as many do today.

The key person in the plot’s shipboard company is that Hollywood cliché of the magic hacker who can do anything and mostly never gets caught. It gets even sillier when Ms. Magic Hacker develops a magic hat that turns out to be a setup for the novel’s conclusion.

At the roughly 75% mark, the plot moves to the planet’s surface. I was hoping for a major payoff given the hundreds of office politics laden pages I had to wade through to here. As it turned out, not so much. We end up with a magic scientist profiled through the book, some magical lifeforms that are barely examined and somewhat of a soggy final act.

While a standalone novel, the ending isn’t an ending but a pause point offering a good starting point for two additional novels. It’s similar to the Bounty Trilogy where the first book successfully spawns two more on widely different branches. If the author does continue this into a series, I’ll be a reader of it/them unless it’s a reversion to the all-dialog no-action office politics plotline.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced copy! I adore books that have this kind of premise. The Earth is no longer able to support us, because we destroyed it and we need to find a new world. The different perspectives between all different types that get caught up in the last roughly 200 days of travel shows a uniquely different issue than what I would consider to be the usual issue in a ship traveling for app. 250 years. As well as what happens when they finally get there. I won't spoil anything, but a fantastic book. Read it, enjoy, and watch as things slowly spiral out of everyone's control.

One of the things about Science Fiction as a genre is that it always seems to be portrayed as prescient (or as attempting to be prescient) in envisioning a future beset by problems that do not face us when we read it. I don’t think this is quite true. I think when it’s done well it’s less a window to the future, and more a mirror that reflects the present. In GENERATION SHIP, Michael Mammay polishes a mirror and calls it a window. He shows us a generation ship built to colonize a planet orbiting a distant star (hardly a 2023 type of challenge), but despite appearing at first blush to be a window, it’s a mirror, and we’re looking at ourselves the entire time.

GENERATION SHIP gives us what’s on the label. It’s a novel about the people aboard a generation ship on the verge of arriving at its extrasolar destination. The fabric of the society that has bound this community together over the 200ish years in transit is fraying because… well… how *couldn’t* it? Several generations had lived and died all working toward the goal of colonizing a planet, and now this particular generation gets the chance to do so? What if you were the last person too old to see what you had come so far to see? What if you were the person in charge of keeping a delicate peace aboard a ship that absolutely requires it? What if you were an ambitious genius stuck, by virtue of the rules and regulations governing the ship, in a role that you know squanders your potential? What if you were in charge, and everyone’s lives hang on your decisions?

These concerns are relatable, but where the window silvers over and is fully replaced by the mirror is in the, honestly, infuriatingly believable petty bullshit. I found myself wanting to reach through the pages and grab characters by the throat and scream “do you not see how your narrow concerns should be subordinate to the greater project?” How do all of these people prioritize their narrow political nonsense over the landing of a lifeboat of humanity on a habitable planet? Do they not see how there are thousands and thousands of lives at stake? It’s almost unbelievable, when faced with a goal so lofty that people would be so petty, so political, and so callous to their fellow humans.

Surely if we were faced with a challenge with so dire of stakes, and asked to sacrifice so very little to advance the survival of thousands and thousands of people we share a society with, we would. Wouldn’t we?

Oh.

Nevermind.

Like I said, science fiction, when done well, is a mirror. And sometimes what we find in the mirror isn’t the most flattering.

At the end of the day, GENERATION SHIP is one of those reads that is punchy, it pulls you forward, it has satisfying characters arcs and the players grow and struggle and achieve and fail. It isn’t a ra-ra cheer a tidy conclusion type of book, because ultimately it’s telling the story of how messy human nature is, and how our dedication to societal ends is vulnerable to individual priorities. And doing that well doesn’t exactly lend itself to a Hollywood ending. The journey, however, is fantastic, as at the end of the day it was one of my favorite reads in recent memory.

This book really makes the most out of its roughly 600 page count. What I mean by that is it feels like so much story packed into only one single volume. And that story is masterfully delivered through a handful of viewpoint characters who all have varying motivations and ideological convictions. This makes for one heck of a political drama set against the backdrop of a galaxy-spanning space opera that I simply couldn't get enough of.

The wonderfully unique thing about this book is that much of it takes place on the actual ship rather than the planet. More than once I found myself asking, "Come on, when are we going to get to the dang planet?" Then I gradually began to realize that this story is far more nuanced than just being solely about the attempted colonization of Promissa. It also has a lot to do with the clashing personalities of the parties involved and their own ideological agendas. That's when it truly hit me that Michael Mammay is a brilliant storyteller who reveals both the strengths and flaws in human nature through deeply fleshed-out characters.

Needless to say I was ALL IN as the chapters quickly flew by, having felt as if I too was living within the confines of the colony ship with these characters. What would we ultimately find on the enigmatic planet of Promissa? Would those 18,000 or so souls be stepping onto a totally benign and isolated planet perfect for terraforming and ultimately able to sustain them for millennia to come? Or would they encounter something they didn't initially foresee that would throw into turmoil centuries of hope and planning? Chewing over these questions and wanting desperately to find out the answers to them is a huge part of why GENERATION SHIP is so unputdownable in my opinion.

As I was reading this book I was reminded so much of one of my all-time favorite SF series, The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. That series also focused a great deal on the political infighting and personal dramas between the main characters, while also deftly balancing the fascinating exploration of Mars element. Similarly, GENERATION SHIP walks that tightrope and gives the reader a marvelous multi-dimensional story that goes well beyond the "adventure on a distant planet" cliché. I really have to give props to Mammay as I have rarely come across a colonization novel that comes even remotely close to the KSR standard, but he has at least equaled it and possibly even surpassed it with this captivating tome.

GENERATION SHIP had me delightfully in its grasp for the better part of two weeks. It was time very well spent as far as I'm concerned. If you enjoy science-fiction that goes way beyond the usual surface layer genre conventions, then you really need to check this one out. It will make you think and also have you hanging on every single sentence of dialogue. GENERATION SHIP is a top-notch SF novel that is only enhanced by some of the best characterization you will ever come across. Michael Mammay is an author who I am really glad to have discovered and I am now hellbent on reading his entire bibliography. Do yourself a favor and just read this book. It's a complete knockout that will have you wanting to devote every minute of your free time to discovering what lies at the end of its enthralling journey. Believe me, it's worth it.

Thanks to HarperCollins and Michael Mammay for the opportunity to read an ARC. This is what I consider a deep generation ship book with politics, lots of well developed plot threads that add to the overall generation ship plot. But it takes the plot to several levels with lots of interactions. It isn’t your normal sci-fi generation type story. Lots of subplots that contribute to the overall story. The ending is indeed satisfying. Highly recommend this book

Generation Ship is among the best political drama SF I've ever read. Mammay has also excelled in providing a depiction of the crew members daily lives, how and why their government functions, and the technology required to maintain their society. I believe the limitations inherent to the setting provide for some rather intriguing dynamics.

The Voyager is a first-of-its-kind colony ship with 18,000 people, a number that is strictly adhered to, that is only months away from completing its 250 year journey to Promissa, a planet in Zeta Tucanae, thought to be habitable with 97% confidence. The expectation that everything is soon to change disrupts the routines that have lasted for centuries and many start to question the value of the traditions and laws that have brought them this far. Each chapter opens with how many days remain. It's at least somewhat allegorical about the contemporary United States.

There are five viewpoint characters and each provides a distinct societal perspective. I don't know if they were literally meant to represent these concepts, but I saw them as Science, Outsider, Populism, Enforcement, and Authority. This allowed for a nuanced and panoramic view of how these forces interact and present their side of the story to each other. This is a character drama and each one felt appropriately written. I enjoyed them all.

In other terms of representation there's a lesbian, a gay guy, two nonbinary characters, and an aromantic woman. There's various context clues that at least a few characters are neurodivergent. None of that is a focus, though doesn't it feel like a checklist either. It's simply who they are and it's only relevant when the situation involved something related to it, which isn't often. There may have been more, but that's what I noticed. All of is this is presented as a normal way of being.

The lead up to the ending and the ending itself were the only parts I didn't like as much as it introduced an idea that I'm as biased against as I'm biased for generation ships. I've never liked it in any media that I've come across and this wasn't an exception. It's not so much that it detracts from my enjoyment as it that I have a preference against its inclusion because it bothers me on both a practical and metaphorical level. That and other late introduced ideas that I felt were out of place did lessen my enthusiasm, but the momentum leading up to it and that this is a book much more about the journey than the destination, let me put aside my misgivings.

Although Ursula K. Le Guin's Paradises Lost, a superb novella, focuses on religion while this doesn't at all, I was often reminded of it while reading this, especially about its ecological concerns. I'll definitely be reading Mammay's prior works, as though they are different from this, it's also the sort that I'm able to enjoy.

I received this DRC from Harper Voyager through NetGalley.

Rating: 4.5/5

[Blurb goes here]

This is my first book by author Michael Mammay. A quick look will tell you that his books have an average of 4.0 stars on Goodreads.

Now on to the story, without giving too much away.

The ship Voyager carrying 18,000 souls on board, is one hundred days from its destination: the planet Promissa. For more than two hundred years, the ship's crew has been born into sectors/directorates: maintenance, engineering, agriculture, and so on. They also follow draconian rules: people making it into their 75th birthday have to go into the recyclers.

When a woman reaches the recycling age, some of the ship's inhabitants refuse to let her die. After all, the ship is nearing Promissa, and colonization will soon follow. What's the point of killing her? When she is to be escorted to her death, Secfor officers are confronted by a mob. In the aftermath, one of the officers accidentally kills her.

This incident awakens discord among the crew. And then, as it always does, humanity happens. Some will try to sabotage missions to the planet. Some will try to change directorates. Some will ignore the science and go for full-scale colonization ahead of schedule.

This space opera has it all. The government trying to divide and conquer, taking scientists' words out of context and bending them to their will. Extremist groups looking for ways to sabotage the ship, so they shoot past their destination.

With beautiful prose, this action adventure will take you into the human psyche and later on into Promissa, a planet that is not what it seems.

This is a highly recommended read. It resonates with much of the stuff that's going on right now.

Thank you for the advanced copy!

This is an epic space opera from an author who is at his prime. Politics and human psychology take center stage as the last of humanity fight for survival against themselves. Wonderful read