I’ve always been drawn to themes of self-sufficiency and self-contained systems that constantly recycle resources in SF.  I picked up Dune when I was too young to really appreciate it, but the one thing that stuck with me was the stillsuits – clothing that recycles sweat and urine and turns it into drinkable water, which enables the wearers to survive in harsh desert environments.

Combine this with an interest in cities and urban planning, and it’s easy to see why I was interested in learning more about arcologies after being introduced to them while studying for our quiz.  I found that generation ships are a kind of arcology, because they are self-contained, self-sufficient cities.  One of my favorite books about a generation ship is An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon.  The book transplants the structure of a southern plantation onto a generation ship, where black residents work in fields overseen by cruel overseers, and the white residents live in luxury on the floors above.  The main plot of the novel is centered around the protagonist decoding mysterious journals left by her mother that are connected to the leader of the ship’s death.  The book also has a fantastic cast of LGBT+ and neuroatypical characters.  Here’s a link to an npr review with more information, I would highly recommend this book: https://www.npr.org/2017/10/06/548665897/unkindness-of-ghosts-transposes-the-plantations-cruelty-to-the-stars

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty is another generation ship book with a locked room mystery set-up.  In the story, a generation ship with hundreds of cryogenically frozen people is staffed by six crewmembers who are able to clone themselves after they die and keep the ship operational for the 300+ year journey.  The story also includes flashbacks that go into the ethics of cloning back on earth, and how our six protagonists got placed on this assignment in the first place.  As always, sending lots of people to a supposedly-habitable planet isn’t as innocent as it seems.

Finally, I thought I should read a short story about generation ships to round out this post, but accidentally chose one that we’ll be reading as a class – “Mono no aware” by Ken Liu.  I thought it was a surprisingly hopeful take on generation ships, and I’m excited to discuss it in class later this semester.