Non-Stop
by Brian Aldiss
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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
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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
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.
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
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
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2034738.html
It must be around thirty years since I first (and last) read Non-Stop. There are still lots of things to like about it. It was a deliberate response to the Heinlein stories later published as Orphans of the Sky, taking the concept of people living on a generation starship, but who do not realise their real situation, to a new level. Where Heinlein's protagonists were barely aware that they were on a spaceship at all, Aldiss's know that they are on a long journey but very little else, and the fact that they have partial knowledge allows Aldiss to partially misdirect us so that the eventual conceptual breakthrough is all the more dramatic.
The gender perspective of the book is a little regrettable. show more The book starts with an argument between Roy Complain, the protagonist, and his lover; their relationship is pretty abusive, and when she is kidnapped we never hear of her again. We do a little better with Roy's other lover, Vyann, who he first encounters as a security official from a more socially advanced group. I feel she rather loses agency as their relationship prospers and Roy gets to save her once of twice, but she does get the last word in the book:
‘Now they'll have no alternative but to take us back to Earth,' Vyann said in a tiny voice. She looked at Complain; she tried, woman-like, to guess at all the new interests that awaited them. She tried to guess at the exquisite pressures which would attend the adjustment of every ship-dweller to the sublimities of Earth. It was as if everyone was about to be born, she thought, smiling into Complain's awakened face. 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.
Though that "woman-like" is rather jarring.
I was surprised to realise that there is quite a strong decolonisation metaphor at the core of the story. Complain and his fellow inhabitants of the ship turn out to have been denied agency by the rest of humanity, treated as subhumans - smaller, smellier and with much shorter lifespans - and in his climactic debate with Complain, the Earth agent Fermour actually invokes Albert Schweitzer as a good example. The ensuing conflict changed Complain's world forever, and while it may not necessarily be for the better, it is from a position of superior understanding.
A final thought, on religion: the belief system of the starship turns out to be a set of completely invented and manipulated lies, but the priest Marapper is sincere. He also appears to die and return to life. show less
It must be around thirty years since I first (and last) read Non-Stop. There are still lots of things to like about it. It was a deliberate response to the Heinlein stories later published as Orphans of the Sky, taking the concept of people living on a generation starship, but who do not realise their real situation, to a new level. Where Heinlein's protagonists were barely aware that they were on a spaceship at all, Aldiss's know that they are on a long journey but very little else, and the fact that they have partial knowledge allows Aldiss to partially misdirect us so that the eventual conceptual breakthrough is all the more dramatic.
The gender perspective of the book is a little regrettable. show more The book starts with an argument between Roy Complain, the protagonist, and his lover; their relationship is pretty abusive, and when she is kidnapped we never hear of her again. We do a little better with Roy's other lover, Vyann, who he first encounters as a security official from a more socially advanced group. I feel she rather loses agency as their relationship prospers and Roy gets to save her once of twice, but she does get the last word in the book:
‘Now they'll have no alternative but to take us back to Earth,' Vyann said in a tiny voice. She looked at Complain; she tried, woman-like, to guess at all the new interests that awaited them. She tried to guess at the exquisite pressures which would attend the adjustment of every ship-dweller to the sublimities of Earth. It was as if everyone was about to be born, she thought, smiling into Complain's awakened face. 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.
Though that "woman-like" is rather jarring.
I was surprised to realise that there is quite a strong decolonisation metaphor at the core of the story. Complain and his fellow inhabitants of the ship turn out to have been denied agency by the rest of humanity, treated as subhumans - smaller, smellier and with much shorter lifespans - and in his climactic debate with Complain, the Earth agent Fermour actually invokes Albert Schweitzer as a good example. The ensuing conflict changed Complain's world forever, and while it may not necessarily be for the better, it is from a position of superior understanding.
A final thought, on religion: the belief system of the starship turns out to be a set of completely invented and manipulated lies, but the priest Marapper is sincere. He also appears to die and return to life. show less
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!
Brian Aldiss a prolific author of mainly science fiction stories, novels and editor of anthologies gets Non-Stop published in 1958 into the Science fiction Masterwork series. Non-Stop is a good title for this science fiction thriller, which hardly pauses for breath as it takes the reader careering round what soon appears to be an abandoned starship. The book starts gently enough with a primitive human society living as a tribe fighting their way through sections of fast growing plant life. It soon becomes apparent that they are living in a giant man made structure and our hero Roy Complain has visions of better things. He is a hunter but his imagination is stirred by the priest of his tribe who wants to break out of the community. They show more succeed and soon meet other tribes, intelligent rodents, and a race of giants as they battle their way to a tribe known as the forwards, rumoured to have a more advanced civilisation.
Aldiss has created an imaginative scenario, but has no time to embark on much world building, what he does do, works well enough for his story. It doesn't bear too much introspection and the science is of the most basic kind, but it does create an atmosphere and an air of mystery as the reader is hurtled along to a climax that doesn't disappoint. Aldiss writes well enough for this genre as he shifts the book through the gears of a good adventure story. The absence of overt sexism and racism is a relief and I enjoyed the ride 4 stars. show less
Aldiss has created an imaginative scenario, but has no time to embark on much world building, what he does do, works well enough for his story. It doesn't bear too much introspection and the science is of the most basic kind, but it does create an atmosphere and an air of mystery as the reader is hurtled along to a climax that doesn't disappoint. Aldiss writes well enough for this genre as he shifts the book through the gears of a good adventure story. The absence of overt sexism and racism is a relief and I enjoyed the ride 4 stars. show less
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Author Information
565+ Works 27,508 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
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Awards and Honors
Awards
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
SF Masterworks (33)
Nebulae (21)
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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.
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