Endless journey

Drive without End (English original title: Non-Stop ; later also Starship ) is a novel by the British author Brian Wilson Aldiss from 1958. In later editions it was published in 1984 as The Neverending Journey and in 2018 as Starship - Lost in Space in each case Translations published. It was the first science fiction novel and at the same time the author's first commercially successful work. The first edition was published in 1958 by the British publisher Faber & Faber and in 1959 the novel was published in the United States by Criterion Books as Starship .

In terms of content, the novel describes the end of a cross-generational journey of a human race in a generational spaceship after returning from the settlement of an exoplanet of the near-Earth star Prokyon to Earth. The people on the ship live in primitive tribes and, after an epidemic of disease and over the generations, only have religious-like traditions about where they are and no access to the controls of the ship.

content

General and formal structure

The novel Reise ohne Ende is a science fiction novel and accordingly entirely fictional. It is divided into four content-related parts, which are also structured in numbered chapters:

• Part 1: Quarter / Quarters (I-IV)
• Part 2: No man's land / Deadways (I-IV)
• Part 3: Forward / Forwards (I-IV)
• Part 4: The Big Something / The Big Something (IV)

The entire book is rendered in the past tense from the position of an omniscient narrator. The story takes place on the spaceship and the narrator accompanies the main character Roy Complain, who lives in the "quarters" in the stern of the ship and from there sets off through the no man's land with the priest Marapper and two other people to discover the secrets of the spaceship in the front Explore decks and find the mysterious captain and control the ship.

action

The protagonist of the novel, the hunter Roy Complain, lives with his wife in the "quarter" of a culturally primitive tribe, the Greene tribe. The quarter lies in the middle of an ever-growing jungle, the " hydroponics ", and is constantly in motion, whereby people repeatedly come across small rooms that contain mysterious things and relics of the "giants". The timing for the tribe is characterized by a sleep-wake rhythm, which is controlled by the lighting of the living space. Complain feels increasingly uncomfortable and driven to leave the quarters. After his wife was stolen by a strange tribe while hunting near the “rear staircase”, he joins a small group around the priest Marapper to leave the quarters. Marapper had come across a book, a "seer", with circuit diagrams, which should lead him to the command center and to the captain of the "ship" on which they are according to their traditions.

The troop, consisting of Complain, Marapper, the disfigured Wantage, Roffery and Bob Fermour, gradually work their way through the jungle, the “no man's land” or the “Deadlands”, from the rear decks to the front. You will meet other tribes with different levels of development. After a collision with the "giants" at a swimming pool, which he takes to be the sea, Complain is caught by them, but released again shortly afterwards. While in captivity, he is harassed by intelligent, mutated rats and a telepathic rabbit in their captivity, which, however, disappear again when the giants return. Roffery was there too, but was left stunned by the giants and disappeared when Complains returned. As they advance further, the group encounters a place where the deck has been destroyed by unknown weapons and weightlessness prevails. Shortly afterwards, they are captured by the residents of "Bowward", where Wantage is killed. They consider them to be scouts of a marauding group of mutants and outcasts led by mad Gregg, by whom they have been attacked several times. After an interrogation, the Marapper and Complain are accepted into the group of the Bugwärts, while Fermour is identified as a "stranger" and held captive for further interrogation. From the bow forward, Marapper and Complain learn more about the spaceship and the journey it should make from a planet of the near-Earth star Prokyon back to Earth before anything unforeseen must have happened. They also tell them about the giants and the "strangers" who infiltrate the people and are seen as enemies. They learn that it should have only taken the spaceship six generations to return to Earth, and that 23 generations have passed since the epidemic.

While she is in Bugwärts, Hawl, a mutant and member of Gregg's troop, visits her, who asks her to join his group. Complain and the security officer Laur Vyann go with Hawl to Gregg's hiding place, which is in the zero gravity area on a higher level of the ship. Gregg, who turns out to be Complain's brother, tells them about massive attacks by the mutated rats, in which many of his followers were injured. He also takes Complain to the seriously wounded Roffery, whom they found and took in, and tells him about a book after he and Complain are descendants of the captain of the spaceship. He also gives them a supposed weapon that can later be identified as a laser welder. Vyann steals the log and after they are back in bow, she meets with Complain to read it. They learn that a few days after leaving Prokyon, the crew was affected by an epidemic caused by infection with a hitherto unknown amino acid that infected all living beings, including the plants, on the ship via the water and either killed or mutated them. Most of the ship's crew was killed during the epidemic, only a few survived and were able to integrate the amino acid into their metabolism.

Complain falls in love with Vyann. Together they examine the welding machine. With its help, they find the largely destroyed command center, which is located behind lowered walls. At the same time, a giant is discovered in bow direction, but it is able to escape, and Fermour was also able to disappear from his cell. With the help of a ring, Marapper manages to open a maintenance shaft in the floor and thus explain the disappearance. Then, on orders from security chiefs Scoyt and Gregg, all covers are removed in order to track down the giants. Complain is asked about the book and the laser device by council member Zac Deight and accompanies him to his quarters, where he is overwhelmed. Deight also turns out to be a stranger and has radio contact with the giants to whom he describes the situation. Complain can free himself and take back the laser, which he hands over to Scoyt. Scoyt and Gregg then gradually begin to tear down individual decks in order to find and kill the giants. They destroy some power lines, water supply and sewage pipes and start a fire that spreads. You will also come across an airlock through whose window you can look out into space and a large planet.

Complain, Marapper and Vyann confront Zac Deight and later Fermour. It turns out that the ship has been in orbit outside of Earth's atmosphere for some time and the giants are just normal-sized Earth people who have tried to improve the conditions of the mutated ship-dwellers by slowly repairing the ship. The strangers are unusually small people from Earth who have infiltrated the various societies of the ship to study the evolution of their civilization. The rulers of the earth were reluctant to integrate the ship's inhabitants into the civilization of the earth because they had mutated to live four times faster than the earth's population and were no longer compatible with the people on earth. Complain realizes that despite their supposed liberation, they will continue to be trapped on the ship.

Background and reception

Origin and expenses

Non-Stop was the first novel by British author Brian Wilson Aldiss . Aldiss, who works as a bookseller, had previously published a series of short prose pieces in the journal The Bookseller under the pseudonym "Peter Pica" and published them in a revised and summarized form in 1955 as the novella The Brightfound Diaries , which was published by Faber & Faber. In the same year he took first place in a short story competition organized by The Observer in England with his story Not for an Age . A first, shorter version of Non-Stop was also published in 1956 in Science Fantasy magazine # 17. At the request of the editor Charles Monteith , Aldiss wrote his debut novel Non-Stop on this basis in 1958 . Through this and the story Judas Dancing , which appeared in the same year , he became known internationally in the United States and later through numerous translations. In 1959 he received the Hugo Award for best young author.

reception

The novel is considered a science fiction classic and, along with Orphans in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein, one of the best classic novels with a focus on the subject of generational spaceships. According to individual authors, Aldiss' novels Non-Stop , Hothouse and Report on Probability A expanded the science fiction genre greatly. In the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction , Non-Stop is called a "brilliant treatment of the generational spaceship topos". designated. In 2008 the novel won the retrospective British Science Fiction Association Award for best novel of 1958.

According to David Pringle , Non-Stop differs from most science fiction stories of its decade in that it has an antiheroic tone to it. The main character, Roy Complain, appears petty, mean, resentful, and a little stupid, though he grows in moral size as the narrative unfolds. However, the other characters are also helpless because of their situation. Pringle relates this to later works by the author, which are mostly about ordinary people. In Non-Stop , the protagonists are also “little people” in both the direct and the figurative sense, since they are usually less than 1.60 meters in height and therefore normal people seem like giants to them. After his portrayal, Aldiss brings another aspect into the story that was not present in earlier science fiction novels: The end is not positive and even after the protagonists have overcome their supposed hurdles and opponents, they are still in a hopeless situation Situation; according to his account, they are victims of a cosmic joke.

Derivative works

The first edition of the pen & paper role-playing game Metamorphosis Alpha by James Ward , which was published in 1976 and is considered the first science fiction role-playing game and is also set on a wrecked generation ship, and the game Gamma World based on it , were inspired by the novel .

expenditure

The novel has been published internationally in numerous editions and translations:

Original edition

• Non-Stop , Faber & Faber, London 1958

German-language editions

• Endless journey (translation by Michael Fröhwein), Moewig, Munich [1958], Terra Utopische Romane Volume 2
• Endless journey , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1970, Volume 06/3191
• The endless journey (translation by Bernd Seligmann and Brigitte Borngässer), vol. 22075, science fiction bestseller, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1984, ISBN 978-3-404-22075-5
• Starship - Lost in Space (translation by Andrea Blendl), Mantikore-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-96188-017-1

Selection of English-language editions

• Starship , Criterion Books, New York 1959 (according to Aldiss with unauthorized text passages)
• Non-Stop , Science Fiction Book Club, London, 1960
• Non-Stop , Signet Books, New York 1960
• Non-Stop , Avon, New York 1969
• Non-Stop , Pan Books, London 1976
• Non-Stop , Carroll & Graf, New York, 1989

Other international editions

• Croisière sans Escale , Denoël, Paris 1959
• Viaggio Senza Fine , Ponzont, Milan 1963
• Ladja Med Zvezdami , Zivljenje an Tehmka, Ljubljana 1966
• Non-Stop, AJ Luitingh, Amsterdam 1969
• Viaje sin Término , in Ciencia Ficciôn Inglesa , Aguilar, Madrid 1968
• Amig Vilag a Vilag , Tanscics, Budapest 1970
• Non-Stop , Gyldendal Norsk, Oslo 1973
• Non-Stop , Iskry, Warsaw 1975
• Non-Stop , Odeon, Prague 1979
• La Nave Estelar , Editorial Sudameracana, Buenos Aires 1979
• Nave-Mundo , Livros do Brasal, Lisbon 1985

supporting documents

1. ↑ ^{a b} Stuart Kelly: Brian Aldiss: 'These days I don't read any science fiction. I only read Tolstoy '. In: The Guardian , December 13, 2013; accessed on May 17, 2019.
2. ↑ 1959 Hugo Awards ( Memento of the original from February 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the official Hugo Awards website; accessed on May 17, 2019. 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Aldiss, Brian W. in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction , March 27, 2019; accessed on May 17, 2019.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} David Pringle : Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. Hachette, London 2014. ( Google Books ).
5. ↑ ^{a b} Michael Curtis: RIP Brian Aldiss / From Starships to Hothouses: The Influence of Brian Aldiss on goodman-games.com, August 27, 2017; accessed on May 17, 2019.
6. ↑ Metamorphosis Alpha in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction , March 5, 2017; accessed on May 17, 2019.
7. ↑ ^{a b} Non-Stop on Brian Aldiss' website; accessed on May 14, 2019.

Web links

• Non-stop on Brian Aldiss's website (with international editions)
• Non-Stop in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB)