Book Review: Braking Day, by Adam Oyebanji
A YA generation ship story done well.
DAW, 2022, 359 pages
On a generation ship bound for a distant star, one engineer-in-training must discover the secrets at the heart of the voyage in this new sci-fi novel.
It's been over a century since three generation ships escaped an Earth dominated by artificial intelligence in pursuit of a life on a distant planet orbiting Tau Ceti. Now, it’s nearly Braking Day, when the ships will begin their long-awaited descent to their new home.
Born on the lower decks of the Archimedes, Ravi Macleod is an engineer-in-training, set to be the first of his family to become an officer in the stratified hierarchy aboard the ship. While on a routine inspection, Ravi sees the impossible: a young woman floating, helmetless, out in space. And he’s the only one who can see her.
As his visions of the girl grow more frequent, Ravi is faced with a choice: secure his family’s place among the elite members of Archimedes’ crew or risk it all by pursuing the mystery of the floating girl.
With the help of his cousin, Boz, and her illegally constructed AI, Ravi must investigate the source of these strange visions and uncovers the truth of the Archimedes’ departure from Earth before Braking Day arrives and changes everything about life as they know it.
Generation ship stories were passe for a long time, but they must have been on the "hot list" for a few agents for a while, because I've read several in the past few years.
Now, scientists have pointed out that generation ships (where humans live in a giant spaceship that spends decades or centuries reaching another star system, producing new generations who live and die aboard the ship, all so a future generation can finally reach their destination) really can't work, for many technological, biological, and social reasons. Not without magic-level technology, anyway (in which case, you might as well imagine FTL travel). But the premise is still alluring and makes for compelling stories, so SF readers can accept it just like they can accept FTL travel in space operas.
Braking Day follows a lot of the tropes that have become common to the subgenre: centuries ago, people left Earth for (reasons). Over time, the crew of the ship has become stratified into a caste-like society, with the "officers" lording it over the grunts who do the dirty work. And of course, there will be a Big Secret related to their actual mission and what will happen with they arrive.
Ravi Macleod is your typical YA protagonist. He's from a "non-academic" family, as one of the officers sarcastically refers to his clan of black marketeers and scrubs, but he's obtained a rare slot in engineering school, destined to become an officer, if he can actually pass training despite the prejudices of his peers and superiors. Naturally, he has a massive crush on the popular girl who's a member of the Captain's family, and thus completely out of his league. Naturally, she will play a part in the plot as both the love interest and the twist, when it comes, regarding loyalties.
His generation ship, the Archimedes, is approaching Braking Day- when they will turn around and begin applying reverse thrust to slow the ship to a halt above New Earth, in the Tau Ceti system. Ravi is a member of that lucky generation that will actually see planetfall. All the old crew hierarchies will be dissolved and their society will change forever. Can you predict that there will be factions who don't want this?
When Ravi sees a hallucination of a girl floating outside an airlock without a suit, trying to talk to him, it leads to him eventually learning things about their ship, their mission, and what will happen on Braking Day. The story goes in some fairly unpredictable directions, but stays within the realm of moderately-hard SF.
A generation ship story about a young man invites Heinlein comparisons, of course, but Oyabanji's characters aren't Heinleinian; they are competent and human, but messier, and the writing style and the storyline are contemporary. I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed it a lot more than Medusa Uploaded, which was similar in many ways but weirder and with less believable characters.
My complete list of book reviews.
DAW, 2022, 359 pages
On a generation ship bound for a distant star, one engineer-in-training must discover the secrets at the heart of the voyage in this new sci-fi novel.
It's been over a century since three generation ships escaped an Earth dominated by artificial intelligence in pursuit of a life on a distant planet orbiting Tau Ceti. Now, it’s nearly Braking Day, when the ships will begin their long-awaited descent to their new home.
Born on the lower decks of the Archimedes, Ravi Macleod is an engineer-in-training, set to be the first of his family to become an officer in the stratified hierarchy aboard the ship. While on a routine inspection, Ravi sees the impossible: a young woman floating, helmetless, out in space. And he’s the only one who can see her.
As his visions of the girl grow more frequent, Ravi is faced with a choice: secure his family’s place among the elite members of Archimedes’ crew or risk it all by pursuing the mystery of the floating girl.
With the help of his cousin, Boz, and her illegally constructed AI, Ravi must investigate the source of these strange visions and uncovers the truth of the Archimedes’ departure from Earth before Braking Day arrives and changes everything about life as they know it.
Generation ship stories were passe for a long time, but they must have been on the "hot list" for a few agents for a while, because I've read several in the past few years.
Now, scientists have pointed out that generation ships (where humans live in a giant spaceship that spends decades or centuries reaching another star system, producing new generations who live and die aboard the ship, all so a future generation can finally reach their destination) really can't work, for many technological, biological, and social reasons. Not without magic-level technology, anyway (in which case, you might as well imagine FTL travel). But the premise is still alluring and makes for compelling stories, so SF readers can accept it just like they can accept FTL travel in space operas.
Braking Day follows a lot of the tropes that have become common to the subgenre: centuries ago, people left Earth for (reasons). Over time, the crew of the ship has become stratified into a caste-like society, with the "officers" lording it over the grunts who do the dirty work. And of course, there will be a Big Secret related to their actual mission and what will happen with they arrive.
Ravi Macleod is your typical YA protagonist. He's from a "non-academic" family, as one of the officers sarcastically refers to his clan of black marketeers and scrubs, but he's obtained a rare slot in engineering school, destined to become an officer, if he can actually pass training despite the prejudices of his peers and superiors. Naturally, he has a massive crush on the popular girl who's a member of the Captain's family, and thus completely out of his league. Naturally, she will play a part in the plot as both the love interest and the twist, when it comes, regarding loyalties.
His generation ship, the Archimedes, is approaching Braking Day- when they will turn around and begin applying reverse thrust to slow the ship to a halt above New Earth, in the Tau Ceti system. Ravi is a member of that lucky generation that will actually see planetfall. All the old crew hierarchies will be dissolved and their society will change forever. Can you predict that there will be factions who don't want this?
When Ravi sees a hallucination of a girl floating outside an airlock without a suit, trying to talk to him, it leads to him eventually learning things about their ship, their mission, and what will happen on Braking Day. The story goes in some fairly unpredictable directions, but stays within the realm of moderately-hard SF.
A generation ship story about a young man invites Heinlein comparisons, of course, but Oyabanji's characters aren't Heinleinian; they are competent and human, but messier, and the writing style and the storyline are contemporary. I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed it a lot more than Medusa Uploaded, which was similar in many ways but weirder and with less believable characters.
My complete list of book reviews.