Generation Ship is a story about a colony ship that is approaching a planet they hope will support life so they can settle there. The ship has been traveling so long that they are several generations away from the founders who set off from Earth long ago. When rumors of the possibility of finally reaching a habitable planet the society is disrupted. Some people want to  flout the mandatory death at age seventy-five to avoid population beyond their capacity to provide.

Factions arise. People want to revisit other rules of the original charter written by the first generation who left Earth. The rules have kept the ship stable over the centuries, ensuring enough workers, but assuring the population was stable. But it did mean, for example, that people who were more interested in and suitable for other work would get stuck in a department that they had little aptitude for.

What was the most effective and successful element of Generation Ship is how Michael Mammay writes about events within the worldview of each character. This means that people can be in opposition through rational differences based on how their position, their work, limits what they think is important. That means that the security force employee and the governor think stability is most important while the farmer also wants stability but within a more democratic society. The IT hacker/maintenance worker is focused in making the ship more productive, efficient, and safe. The scientist’s framework is what science tells them they can or cannot do. People do bad things, but within an ethical framework constructed by their social and work context. This makes this book so much smarter than most. Its people are complex and no one is evil, they are just limited by their experience.

I don’t rate many books this highly, but Generation Ship was a book I did not want to end. I want to know what happens next. I don’t want to say goodbye, not even with the characters who disappointed me. I want them to redeem themselves. I think it’s possible, even likely.

Mammay succeeded in making me care about all the characters, even the ones whom I thought were in the wrong. They were in the wrong, but honestly, based on their own moral framework and worldview.

And that’s not even mentioning how ingenious Mammay is in coming up with a mind-bending expansion of what life can be. I was honestly flabbergasted, but in a good way.