In the generation ship, the Pioneer, Evan Friday has been reduced from officer to crewman. He learns from a policeman that the police cannot prevent brawls but must, of course, stop riots. Riots! Friday is advised not to complain if he is beaten up because this might lead to him being murdered. This cannot be the way to run a spaceship! All that these generations of crewmen are doing is transmitting their genes to Alpha Centauri. There have to be better ways to do that.
Out of officer territory, halls are drabber and dingier while apartments are "...smaller and poorly furnished..." (p. 95) None of this is necessary. It has been socially engineered. Unmarried workers live in barracks. Many of the crew curse and spit after policemen. How have such social divisions and attitudes grown up inside a spaceship in just four generations? Drabber halls, smaller apartments and barracks have all been physically and sociologically designed for a purpose. Surely at least some of the people there realize that? And also that the expedition could have been conducted on an entirely different basis?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, this kind of policing in a generation ship is not plausible. A reasonably efficient administration would crack down on brawls, both because the victims of beatings deserve to have their assailants punished and to keep such fights from leading to worse things.
Ad astra! Sean
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