Non-Stop
By Brian Aldiss

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive ...
R. L. Stevenson

Aldiss has this Stevenson quote front and center at the start of his first science-fiction novel: a short and pacy adventure published in 1958. By the end, you might also understand why.

The US title was "Starship", which gives some of the game away unfortunately.

Right: The cover of the old US hardback I have. Surprisingly, using the British "Non-Stop" title. The graphic design and artwork is, let us say, of its time. Publisher: Carroll & Graf 1989.

I enjoyed this book a lot: Aldiss has obviously thought through the sort of things that might happen if humans have to live on an interstellar spaceship for a very long time. Think of features of speech, custom, culture, religion and all manner of human relationships. We are a fractious people. Space travel is hard on us and our bodies.

The ship in use here would be called a "generation" ship today: a well used trope of science-fiction since this was written (Aldiss might have been the first to write about it properly). The galaxy is so big that the human brain cannot fully grasp the numbers involved; they are just so large. I am not sure we would survive such a journey, but if we did, it might end up something like this. I made some assumptions here and thought I had a good idea what the end would bring, but I was surprised and wrong. A good book, and shows you can pack a lot into less than two-hundred pages.