According to these myths, the Ship was built by 'Jordan'. They've been on a huge spaceship ('The Ship') for many generations, and all they can remember of Earth are distant legends kept alive in an oral tradition. Arguably it's realistic for this group of people, but if you're sensitive about this kind of thing, give this book a pass. Written in 1940s + backwards society on the spaceship = women are pretty much nonexistent in the story, and when they do show up they're treated like servants (in one scene, a mouthy woman gets slapped down).

Joe-Jim's arguments with himself are one of the highlights. I wouldn't recommend that anyone go out of their way to read this story, but if you like old-fashioned SF and Heinlein's stories from the period when they were only semi-weird, this is a fun and quick read. For excitement, the normal people battle the mutant Muties - but the leader of the Muties, the two-headed Joe-Jim, actually has rather more of a clue about what's really going on. The story of where they are from and where they're going has turned into a religion. To them, it is the world and the universe. The trip has taken so long that the people being born, living, having children and dying on the huge ship have lost all scientific knowledge about what the ship is and where it's going. But could he make his people believe him before it was to late? Could he make them believe that he must be allowed to fly the ship?Īn imaginative if improbable tale (or more accurately: pair of SF tales combined together to make a short novel) by Robert Heinlein, about a spaceship voyage to colonize another planet. And he learned the true nature of the Ship and its mission between the stars. Then Hugh was captured by the muties and met their leader (or leaders), Joe-Jim, with two heads on one body. Were they evil incarnate, or merely a divine check on the population, keeping humanity from expanding past the capacity of the Ship to support?

Of course, there were the muties, grotesquely deformed parodies of humans, who lurked in the upper reaches of the Ship where gravity was weaker. Indeed, how could the Ship move, since its miles and miles of metal corridors were all there was of creation? Science knew that the Ship was all the Universe, and as long as the sacred Convertor was fed, the lights would continue to glow and the air would flow, and the Creator's Plan would be fulfilled. But he also understood this was actually allegory for a voyage to spiritual perfection. Hugh had been taught that, according to the ancient sacred writings, the Ship was on a voyage to faraway Centaurus. A fix-up consisting of the novelette Universe (1941) and the novella Common Sense (1941).

Robert heinlein orphans of the sky