Charles L. Fontenay (1917–2007)

For a time, generation-ship stories were all the rage in SF circles. I suspect it came about as a rebellion of sorts against gee-whiz super-science magical warp drives that allowed space travelers to whisk effortlessly from star to star in the blink of an eye. It made for some interesting stories, and a lot of authors (good and mediocre) wrote stores for this sub-genre. It fell out of favor for several decades, but seems to be making a modest revival.
This particular story is actually one of the better ones. It focuses on the smallness of the community, with rigid social protocols sternly enforced. How can dreams, much less dreams of spanning the stars, exists under such a regime? And what about individualism struggling against such pressures for conformity? All in all, a nicely done story.
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Enjoyable but not exceptional doomsday story. In its favour, the tidal wave scenes are probably more realistic than most but, because of that, they are not as spectacular and exciting as they could have been. The story also falls into some of the classic cliches of this type of book but, to be fair, I can't say whether they were cliches back in 1964 when it was written. But the above points are concentrating on the critical. It's a quick, enjoyable read with a great premise - the kind of story SyFy could make a cheap but decent disaster movie from.… (mehr)