Non-Stop
by Brian Aldiss
On This Page
Description
Non-Stop remains a brilliant and ground-breaking work of imagination. Curiosity was discouraged in the Greene tribe. It's members lived out their lives in cramped quarters, hacking away at the encroaching jungle called "the ponics." As to where they were--that had long ago been forgotten. But Roy Complain decides to find out, along with the renegade priest, Marapper. They move into unmapped territory, where they make a series of discoveries which turn their universe upside-down. They meet show more mutants and giants, regimented rats, telepathic rabbits, and the fabled Outsiders. And they confront a secret kept hidden for twenty-three generations--a secret whose discovery will reveal their origins and destiny even as it destroys their world. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
AlanPoulter Both are very baroque, dark, novels set in generation starships
Cecrow Similar premise
jigarpatel "Non-Stop" (1958) is a well-developed successor to Heinlein's fix-up "Orphans of the Sky" (whose components were first published 1941). I recommend "Non-Stop" for plot and characterization, "Orphans of the Sky" for those interested in the development of science fiction. Both are excellent.
Member Reviews
A generational starship which has lost it's way/purpose is hardly new ground in sci-fi but Aldiss gives it a novel spin by adding everything from evolutionary twists and homegrown theology to conspiracy theories. The final act, while not a total shocker, still managed to provide a couple of surprises. I liked it!
Written as response to Robert A. Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky, Aldiss' novel is a classic generation starship tale.
The idea that their universe is the inside of a giant spaceship is known but derided in the Greene tribe. They're a barbarous lot. They destroy books whenever they find them. The Teaching, a Freudian inspired religion with its talk of id and ego, values full and immediate expression of fear and anger lest the repression of those emotions curdle into neurosis. A nomadic lot, they seal off the hallway they live in, moving the barricades when they exhaust the "ponics", plants that abound in the ship's corridors. Their power stems from a cache of weapons found two generations ago.
And protagonist Roy Complain is not happy show more with his life in the tribe. He gets flogged for losing his woman on a hunting expedition into the "deadways" beyond the tribes "Quarters". Chaffing under the Teaching and floggings of his tribe, Complain decides to accompany priest Marapper and three others through the deadways and to the land of the advanced people of Forwards. Marapper expects, somewhere, to find the ship's control room, seize control of the vessel, and end this painful journey through the stars.
In his wanderings, Complain learns the truth behind the other groups -- the mutants, the Outsiders, and the Giants -- rumored to inhabit the ship. Aldiss puts an ironic twist to the generation starship tale, particularly Orphans of the Sky, when he reveals the exact situation of the ship. By novel's end, Aldiss gives a detailed and ingenious explanation for Complain's world.
It's not necessary to read the Heinlein story, or any other generation starship tale, to appreciate this fine novel. Aldiss gives us believable emotion and, in Complain, a fine portrait of a man growing into a true knowledge of himself and his world. show less
The idea that their universe is the inside of a giant spaceship is known but derided in the Greene tribe. They're a barbarous lot. They destroy books whenever they find them. The Teaching, a Freudian inspired religion with its talk of id and ego, values full and immediate expression of fear and anger lest the repression of those emotions curdle into neurosis. A nomadic lot, they seal off the hallway they live in, moving the barricades when they exhaust the "ponics", plants that abound in the ship's corridors. Their power stems from a cache of weapons found two generations ago.
And protagonist Roy Complain is not happy show more with his life in the tribe. He gets flogged for losing his woman on a hunting expedition into the "deadways" beyond the tribes "Quarters". Chaffing under the Teaching and floggings of his tribe, Complain decides to accompany priest Marapper and three others through the deadways and to the land of the advanced people of Forwards. Marapper expects, somewhere, to find the ship's control room, seize control of the vessel, and end this painful journey through the stars.
In his wanderings, Complain learns the truth behind the other groups -- the mutants, the Outsiders, and the Giants -- rumored to inhabit the ship. Aldiss puts an ironic twist to the generation starship tale, particularly Orphans of the Sky, when he reveals the exact situation of the ship. By novel's end, Aldiss gives a detailed and ingenious explanation for Complain's world.
It's not necessary to read the Heinlein story, or any other generation starship tale, to appreciate this fine novel. Aldiss gives us believable emotion and, in Complain, a fine portrait of a man growing into a true knowledge of himself and his world. show less
For a first novel (written in 1958), this is not at all bad, yet it felt less good returning to it several decades after first reading. It descends into space melodrama towards the end and its cultural predictions are based on the survival in some form of Freudianism which we know did not last long.
Nevertheless, Aldiss writes lucidly and imaginatively and the book has its importance as an attempt to apply anthropology and psychology to its imagining of the future rather than just rely on technology and engineering.
Without spoilers, it is hard to review this book in the detail. Some degree of surprise at how events turn out is part of the pleasure but we can draw attention to Aldiss' wise avoidance of having our species degenerate and show more then abstract itself entirely from 'old' technologies.
The location of the adventure (for the core of the book is a quest that is brother to those of Frodo or Bilbo Baggins), whatever that location should prove to be, is clearly something technological which the inhabitants have lost the knowledge to understand except insofar as they can use it directly.
The religious world of the humans and their folklore have a certain logic given what they know and what their history (only revealed to them later) provides for them. Underlying the book is a type of existentialism - what happens when the tragedy of existence is finally exposed.
These humans are certainly tragic but it is not difficult to look on their situation and wonder how different it is from ours. It is as if Aldiss has simply intensified the human predicament in order to show us that our predicament is only more tolerable 'because it could be worse'.
There is another theme (being careful here with spoilers) that will appear again with the Helliconia Trilogy - that we little people are being observed whether 'for own good' or (in Helliconia) for the entertainment or intellectual stimulation of others.
They and we are subjects of others' interest. Those others are always more powerful than the subjects they observe, manipulate and either assist or use. Such a situation is not unknown to us in the unscientific present.
Another theme that will appear again in Aldiss is of humanity descending into 'inhumanity', mutation and barbarism once isolated. There is the same pessimism about escape from our own perfidious nature found at the margins of Helliconia once our species ceases to expand outwards.
It is rightly noted that American science fiction in this period and long after tended to optimism and to the extension of frontiers and that British science fiction tended to pessimism, dystopianism (it is to be found in Frankenstein and The Time Machine) and a sense of entrapment and threat.
That, of course, is an over-simplification but this particular novel manages to be both entertaining, a romp of sorts, and also very sombre in its implications. The shrinking of the British world and the expansion of the world of Captain America have had their analogues in science fiction. show less
Nevertheless, Aldiss writes lucidly and imaginatively and the book has its importance as an attempt to apply anthropology and psychology to its imagining of the future rather than just rely on technology and engineering.
Without spoilers, it is hard to review this book in the detail. Some degree of surprise at how events turn out is part of the pleasure but we can draw attention to Aldiss' wise avoidance of having our species degenerate and show more then abstract itself entirely from 'old' technologies.
The location of the adventure (for the core of the book is a quest that is brother to those of Frodo or Bilbo Baggins), whatever that location should prove to be, is clearly something technological which the inhabitants have lost the knowledge to understand except insofar as they can use it directly.
The religious world of the humans and their folklore have a certain logic given what they know and what their history (only revealed to them later) provides for them. Underlying the book is a type of existentialism - what happens when the tragedy of existence is finally exposed.
These humans are certainly tragic but it is not difficult to look on their situation and wonder how different it is from ours. It is as if Aldiss has simply intensified the human predicament in order to show us that our predicament is only more tolerable 'because it could be worse'.
There is another theme (being careful here with spoilers) that will appear again with the Helliconia Trilogy - that we little people are being observed whether 'for own good' or (in Helliconia) for the entertainment or intellectual stimulation of others.
They and we are subjects of others' interest. Those others are always more powerful than the subjects they observe, manipulate and either assist or use. Such a situation is not unknown to us in the unscientific present.
Another theme that will appear again in Aldiss is of humanity descending into 'inhumanity', mutation and barbarism once isolated. There is the same pessimism about escape from our own perfidious nature found at the margins of Helliconia once our species ceases to expand outwards.
It is rightly noted that American science fiction in this period and long after tended to optimism and to the extension of frontiers and that British science fiction tended to pessimism, dystopianism (it is to be found in Frankenstein and The Time Machine) and a sense of entrapment and threat.
That, of course, is an over-simplification but this particular novel manages to be both entertaining, a romp of sorts, and also very sombre in its implications. The shrinking of the British world and the expansion of the world of Captain America have had their analogues in science fiction. show less
The first half of Non-Stop holds up exceptionally well, and is quite similar to Aldiss' (better, from what I recall) Hot House. The future it paints was quite novel in 1958, as is the pessimistic voice.
Three things really drag the latter half down, though: a) Aldiss introduces a love interest for the unlikeable hero, Complain, which is about as misogynistic a portrayal as you'd expect in a novel intended for teenaged boys in the 1950s, b) immediately after running into a more advanced society on the ship, our bumbling and self-absorbed heroes are all...basically put in charge of the entire colony without any sensible reason,and c) Aldiss attempts to explain the mystery and it is...mostly just follows the most obvious and uninspired show more guess.
It's wild how much the second half just ruins what'd otherwise feel so timeless. show less
Three things really drag the latter half down, though: a) Aldiss introduces a love interest for the unlikeable hero, Complain, which is about as misogynistic a portrayal as you'd expect in a novel intended for teenaged boys in the 1950s, b) immediately after running into a more advanced society on the ship, our bumbling and self-absorbed heroes are all...basically put in charge of the entire colony without any sensible reason,and c) Aldiss attempts to explain the mystery and it is...mostly just follows the most obvious and uninspired show more guess.
It's wild how much the second half just ruins what'd otherwise feel so timeless. show less
Regretfully need to use the For It's Time(trademark) preface, but this moves quickly, not simply in its mile-a-minute plot, but in its plotting, which was surprising given the moderately tedious syntaxing at play here (and the, I mean, just par for the course at this point, raging Horniness-Sexism Tornado), with some genuinely nice twist-y elements thrown in at the end. There's also, god forbid, a genuine structural critique of social scientific field methodology present within, in terms of the ambiguous to nefarious spectrum of the relationship between the studier and the studied here.
It's an entertaining adventure, but the mystery aspects don't work as well as they could. It's interesting to try to figure out exactly what's going on as you read, but unfortunately the ending doesn't deliver anything better than what you'll have thought up on your own.
This isn't a book. It's an Ur-book, a book that comes before the books that you know. The thing which creates a pattern.
Actually, I don't know that that's really the case, but that's what it feels like, as with all the Brian Aldiss books that I've read: he creates not just worlds, but patterns for worlds. Here, the interstellar generation ship that nobody really knows is a generation ship.
In the end, the whole plot is an excuse to explore the setting--and the ways it can change. But the writing is soooo good.
I'm a big fan of Gene Wolfe's Long Sun books, and it feels like GW took a giant bow in Aldiss's direction when he wrote some of them.
"Like a radar echo bounding from a distant object and returning to its source, the sound of Roy show more Complain's beating heart seemed to him to fill the clearing. He stod with one hand on the threshold of his compartment, listening to the rage hammering through his arteries." show less
Actually, I don't know that that's really the case, but that's what it feels like, as with all the Brian Aldiss books that I've read: he creates not just worlds, but patterns for worlds. Here, the interstellar generation ship that nobody really knows is a generation ship.
In the end, the whole plot is an excuse to explore the setting--and the ways it can change. But the writing is soooo good.
I'm a big fan of Gene Wolfe's Long Sun books, and it feels like GW took a giant bow in Aldiss's direction when he wrote some of them.
"Like a radar echo bounding from a distant object and returning to its source, the sound of Roy show more Complain's beating heart seemed to him to fill the clearing. He stod with one hand on the threshold of his compartment, listening to the rage hammering through his arteries." show less
Members
- Recently Added By
Lists
The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read
1,005 works; 546 members
Generation Ship
28 works; 7 members
S.F. Masterworks (Complete)
229 works; 15 members
Used books to buy next
565 works; 1 member
Read
293 works; 4 members
David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels
101 works; 9 members
SF Masterworks
193 works; 8 members
Books Read in 2014
2,341 works; 86 members
Les 100 principaux titres de la science-fiction (1981)
126 works; 3 members
An evolving science fiction novel canon
50 works; 2 members
Author Information
563+ Works 27,320 Members
Brian W. Aldiss was born in Dereham, United Kingdom on August 18, 1925. In 1943, he joined the Royal Signals regiment, and saw action in Burma. After World War II, he worked as a bookseller at Oxford University. His first book, The Brightfount Diaries, was published in 1955. His first science fiction novel, Non-Stop (Starship in the United show more States), was published in 1958. He wrote more than 80 books including Hothouse, Greybeard, The Helliconia Trilogy, The Squire Quartet, Frankenstein Unbound, The Malacia Tapestry, Walcot, and Mortal Morning. His short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long was the basis for the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. He has received numerous awards for his work including two Hugo Awards, the Nebula Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and an OBE for services to literature. He was also an anthologist and an artist. He was the editor of 40 anthologies including Introducing SF, The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus, Space Opera, Space Odysseys, Galactic Empires, Evil Earths, and Perilous Planets. He was an abstract artist and his first solo exhibition, The Other Hemisphere, was held in Oxford in August-September 2010. He died on August 19, 2017 at the age of 92. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
SF Masterworks (33)
Nebulae (21)
Work Relationships
Is contained in
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Non-stop
- Original title
- Non-Stop
- Alternate titles
- Starship (US) (US)
- Original publication date
- 1958
- People/Characters
- Roy Complain; Henry Marapper; Laur Vyann; Bob Fermour; Roger Scoyt; Wantage (show all 8); Ern Roffery; Gregg Complain
- Important places
- Generation Ship
- Epigraph
- It is safer for a novelist to choose as his subject something he feels about than something he knows about.
--L.P. Hartley
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive...
R. L. Stevenson - Dedication
- for who else but Ted Carnell, Editor of New Worlds and Science Fantasy and starter of Non-Stop
In affectionate memory of
TED CARNELL, Editor of New Worlds and Science Fantasy and starter of Non-Stop (2000 edition) - First words
- Like a radar echo bounding from a distant object and returning to its source, the sound of Roy Complain's beating heart seemed to him to fill the clearing.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)He was her sort; neither of them had ever been really sure of what they wanted: so they would be most likely to find it.
- Original language
- English
- Disambiguation notice
- Also published as 'Non-Stop'.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 1,715
- Popularity
- 12,826
- Reviews
- 44
- Rating
- (3.75)
- Languages
- 18 — Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 40
- ASINs
- 40