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Ship of Fools
Home to generations of humans, the starship Argonos has wandered aimlessly throughout the galaxy for hundreds of years, desperately searching for other signs of life. Now an unidentified transmission lures them toward a nearby planet-and into the dark heart of an alien mystery.
370 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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August 25, 2023
I see a lot of mixed reviews here, but to me, Ship of Fools was an extremely eerie and intense hybrid of horror and space opera*. Though considering Alien is probably my all-time favorite horror film, and a top two or three science-fiction film (Blade Runner will always be tops in my book), I may be slightly biased, as this does have a pretty similar feel, in that a seemingly-abandoned alien spaceship is discovered by the crew of a human-occupied ship. The horrors here are much more psychological than the "slasher in space" feel of the movie, however.
It's told in the first person by Bartolomeo, resident of the upper levels of the generation starship Argonos, which is where the more privileged citizens of the ship reside (government officials, ship crew, etc.), while the bottom levels are reserved for the lower classes. It's pretty much a city in space. The ship has been traveling through the galaxy for so long in search of a habitable planet that no one really knows the ship's origin. Some, like the ship's bishop, believe it has always existed.
The early sections of the novel deal a lot with ship politics, and it's actually pretty interesting due to all the shady plots of insurrection going on behind the captain's back. But things get really interesting once the ship comes across the gigantic derelict craft, which gives off such an ominous, evil vibe that many feel they should just leave it behind, even though it's a monumental discovery (no signs of alien life have ever been discovered before as far as they know). But Bartolomeo is eventually chosen to lead a hand-picked crew to explore the awesome and awe-ful ship. Terror ensues.
I've left a LOT out of my description, due to the fact that I'd rather not give away too much of what makes this novel so compelling. Suffice to say, it's creepy as hell, and the first-person narration by Bartolomeo is very engaging, so much so that I read all 370 pages in two sittings. And I'm not really a fast reader. There's an ever-present sense of wrongness throughout the latter sections, which I loved, and the alien ship is truly just that. Alien. And unknowable.
I'm not sure what others were expecting, but I was expecting a good space-based horror novel, and instead I got a great one, with memorable characters and a fast-paced narrative that's constantly moving forward. I'll certainly be reading more Russo sooner rather than later. But for now I'm off to search for more space horror (and I wish there was more out there).
4.5 Stars.
*Though not really space opera in the sense of interplanetary adventure, but more "new space opera," a sub-genre which emphasizes character development more so than the old-school definition, and is darker and more "literary." It's usually more science-based as well. At least that's how I understand it.
It's told in the first person by Bartolomeo, resident of the upper levels of the generation starship Argonos, which is where the more privileged citizens of the ship reside (government officials, ship crew, etc.), while the bottom levels are reserved for the lower classes. It's pretty much a city in space. The ship has been traveling through the galaxy for so long in search of a habitable planet that no one really knows the ship's origin. Some, like the ship's bishop, believe it has always existed.
The early sections of the novel deal a lot with ship politics, and it's actually pretty interesting due to all the shady plots of insurrection going on behind the captain's back. But things get really interesting once the ship comes across the gigantic derelict craft, which gives off such an ominous, evil vibe that many feel they should just leave it behind, even though it's a monumental discovery (no signs of alien life have ever been discovered before as far as they know). But Bartolomeo is eventually chosen to lead a hand-picked crew to explore the awesome and awe-ful ship. Terror ensues.
I've left a LOT out of my description, due to the fact that I'd rather not give away too much of what makes this novel so compelling. Suffice to say, it's creepy as hell, and the first-person narration by Bartolomeo is very engaging, so much so that I read all 370 pages in two sittings. And I'm not really a fast reader. There's an ever-present sense of wrongness throughout the latter sections, which I loved, and the alien ship is truly just that. Alien. And unknowable.
I'm not sure what others were expecting, but I was expecting a good space-based horror novel, and instead I got a great one, with memorable characters and a fast-paced narrative that's constantly moving forward. I'll certainly be reading more Russo sooner rather than later. But for now I'm off to search for more space horror (and I wish there was more out there).
4.5 Stars.
*Though not really space opera in the sense of interplanetary adventure, but more "new space opera," a sub-genre which emphasizes character development more so than the old-school definition, and is darker and more "literary." It's usually more science-based as well. At least that's how I understand it.
May 10, 2013
spoilers ahead
last week my mom and i had a conversation about God that devolved into an unpleasant argument, with mom saying some things that i found to be ludicrous beyond belief and with me responding with comments that were condescending and offensive. last week i read a book called Ship of Fools; it is a dark and grim science fiction narrative about a colony ship trying to find a new home, written in a polished and straightforward style, and it is has one major concern: the question of evil in a universe created by God. my mom used to be an "existentialist" who eschewed organized religion and it has only been in the past few years that she's found Jesus; her newly found faith has helped her enormously through some tough times. the crew and the passengers on the colony ship Argonos are at different places in their faith, believers & non-believers & those who don't give a crap about such things, all put together in one place, all trying to find something to help them make sense of their lives, to cope.
when mom and i talk about God it will ofen lead to talking about why God allows evil to exist, why children have to suffer, what "Evil" actually is... all that fairly typical stuff, conversations that end with an uncomfortable and probably typical dearth of answers and lack of resolution. a survey team from the Argonos explores a new planet they name "Antioch" and there they discover an old colony and the bodies of the colonists - terribly tortured and murdered men, women, and children hung up on hooks; full of horror and confusion and despair, the surveyors flee back to the Argonos. in our conversation last week, mom wanted to talk about Satan, about a revelation she had had about Evil and its origin - she comes from a perspective that sees Evil as a tangible thing, a purely evil angel that falls from the sky or a purely evil human that walks upon the earth; i see evil as something more intangible, as a choice that can be made or as a situation that is allowed to continue or to even exist in the first place. after their horrific experience on Antioch, the Argonos comes across an unsettling abandoned alien ship; strange things happen during and after the exploration of this ship - a contagious feeling of free-floating anomie and depression, even more widespread feelings of dread and loss of faith, attempted murder, suicide, death... are all these things the result of human failing - or something more tangible, some dire threat from within the ship, some unearthly influence?
mom follows this televangelist named Joyce Meyer who she connects with due to a shared history of childhood trauma and a shared desire to move past that trauma in order to become empowered, enlightened women who can be defined by their strength; i see Meyer as a study in typical hypocritical excess, using the name and word of God to line her own pockets - although i will acknowledge that there is some truth and some beauty in some of the things she says, even in some of her actions. on the Argonos there is a bishop, a corrupt man and man who secretly has no faith, and yet this character - the novel's "villain", i suppose - is just as often right as he is wrong - in the end he assesses evil as a tangible thing and urges the ship to flee that evil; the other characters, including our hero, have deep doubts about such a thing as "tangible evil" - they see no logic or science in it, and so they rationalize actions that lead them closer to that evil and closer to their own doom.
a few days later when i called my mom back to apologize for my harsh words and my sarcastic ridicule, i was inspired to read her a part of Ship of Fools, one that was all about God and "Free Will" and why bad things are allowed to happen; in that passage, a sympathetic clergywoman outlines a key part of her faith: the idea that bad things happen and evil exists simply because God has endowed humanity with Free Will, to choose as they see fit and to react in their own ways to the awful things that the world puts before them - and so to stop these bad things from happening or to somehow make people choose to do good would be to take away that gift of independence and of self-determination... my mom listened to all of this and was satisfied with what she heard, and called the author a "soldier of God". at the end of Ship of Fools, the protagonist and most of the crew and passengers of the Argonos flee their ship to establish a new home on Antioch; our hero remains a resolute atheist, denying the existence of God and of any afterlife, yet somehow finding the idea of something intangible and powerful - a higher power? - to be present in the memory of his love (the clergywoman), in the ability to share and cooperate with others in a new colony that will be built, in the basic concept of hope in what the future may hold, for him as an individual, but more importantly, for him as a part of a larger whole, a community... i would say that this character is my own version of a soldier of God.
last week my mom and i had a conversation about God that devolved into an unpleasant argument, with mom saying some things that i found to be ludicrous beyond belief and with me responding with comments that were condescending and offensive. last week i read a book called Ship of Fools; it is a dark and grim science fiction narrative about a colony ship trying to find a new home, written in a polished and straightforward style, and it is has one major concern: the question of evil in a universe created by God. my mom used to be an "existentialist" who eschewed organized religion and it has only been in the past few years that she's found Jesus; her newly found faith has helped her enormously through some tough times. the crew and the passengers on the colony ship Argonos are at different places in their faith, believers & non-believers & those who don't give a crap about such things, all put together in one place, all trying to find something to help them make sense of their lives, to cope.
when mom and i talk about God it will ofen lead to talking about why God allows evil to exist, why children have to suffer, what "Evil" actually is... all that fairly typical stuff, conversations that end with an uncomfortable and probably typical dearth of answers and lack of resolution. a survey team from the Argonos explores a new planet they name "Antioch" and there they discover an old colony and the bodies of the colonists - terribly tortured and murdered men, women, and children hung up on hooks; full of horror and confusion and despair, the surveyors flee back to the Argonos. in our conversation last week, mom wanted to talk about Satan, about a revelation she had had about Evil and its origin - she comes from a perspective that sees Evil as a tangible thing, a purely evil angel that falls from the sky or a purely evil human that walks upon the earth; i see evil as something more intangible, as a choice that can be made or as a situation that is allowed to continue or to even exist in the first place. after their horrific experience on Antioch, the Argonos comes across an unsettling abandoned alien ship; strange things happen during and after the exploration of this ship - a contagious feeling of free-floating anomie and depression, even more widespread feelings of dread and loss of faith, attempted murder, suicide, death... are all these things the result of human failing - or something more tangible, some dire threat from within the ship, some unearthly influence?
mom follows this televangelist named Joyce Meyer who she connects with due to a shared history of childhood trauma and a shared desire to move past that trauma in order to become empowered, enlightened women who can be defined by their strength; i see Meyer as a study in typical hypocritical excess, using the name and word of God to line her own pockets - although i will acknowledge that there is some truth and some beauty in some of the things she says, even in some of her actions. on the Argonos there is a bishop, a corrupt man and man who secretly has no faith, and yet this character - the novel's "villain", i suppose - is just as often right as he is wrong - in the end he assesses evil as a tangible thing and urges the ship to flee that evil; the other characters, including our hero, have deep doubts about such a thing as "tangible evil" - they see no logic or science in it, and so they rationalize actions that lead them closer to that evil and closer to their own doom.
a few days later when i called my mom back to apologize for my harsh words and my sarcastic ridicule, i was inspired to read her a part of Ship of Fools, one that was all about God and "Free Will" and why bad things are allowed to happen; in that passage, a sympathetic clergywoman outlines a key part of her faith: the idea that bad things happen and evil exists simply because God has endowed humanity with Free Will, to choose as they see fit and to react in their own ways to the awful things that the world puts before them - and so to stop these bad things from happening or to somehow make people choose to do good would be to take away that gift of independence and of self-determination... my mom listened to all of this and was satisfied with what she heard, and called the author a "soldier of God". at the end of Ship of Fools, the protagonist and most of the crew and passengers of the Argonos flee their ship to establish a new home on Antioch; our hero remains a resolute atheist, denying the existence of God and of any afterlife, yet somehow finding the idea of something intangible and powerful - a higher power? - to be present in the memory of his love (the clergywoman), in the ability to share and cooperate with others in a new colony that will be built, in the basic concept of hope in what the future may hold, for him as an individual, but more importantly, for him as a part of a larger whole, a community... i would say that this character is my own version of a soldier of God.
October 21, 2021
4.0 Stars
This was a fantastic piece of space horror!
The narrative was sparse which created a sense of unease. The story began with a lot of ship politics, exploring themes surrounding class and religious theology. However, the tone and focus of the story shifted in part two as the crew is presented with a mysterious and potentially dangerous ship to explore. I absolutely loved the horror elements in this novel with a creepy atmosphere. Given the build up of suspense, I was expecting a bit more from the ending, but nevertheless it was a solid read.
I would highly recommend this one to anyone looking for scifi horror novel set in outer space.
This was a fantastic piece of space horror!
The narrative was sparse which created a sense of unease. The story began with a lot of ship politics, exploring themes surrounding class and religious theology. However, the tone and focus of the story shifted in part two as the crew is presented with a mysterious and potentially dangerous ship to explore. I absolutely loved the horror elements in this novel with a creepy atmosphere. Given the build up of suspense, I was expecting a bit more from the ending, but nevertheless it was a solid read.
I would highly recommend this one to anyone looking for scifi horror novel set in outer space.
May 10, 2013
This is the book that the movie Prometheus should have been: tense, scary, intelligent, with a building sense of dread that starts working its way up your spine the first time things start going awry, and gets worse and worse after each time the characters reach another level of We Are So F***ed.
The Argonos is a generation ship, run by an Executive Council with nominal authority over the Captain. The first part of the book is largely political machinations: we learn that the Argonos has lost its original mission, or any connection with human civilization elsewhere in the galaxy. They occasionally find human-inhabited colonies, but infrequently and there is no substantial trade or diplomacy. Instead, they've become an insular, closed community, several thousand people divided into "downsiders," who are virtually serfs, and the ship's officers and crew, who spend most of their time playing petty political games.
The main character and first-person narrator is Bartolomeo, an orphan born with stunted limbs and a misshapen spine, which he compensates for with an exoskeleton and prosthetic limbs. Nikos, a childhood friend of Bartolomeo, is now the Captain of the Argonos. Bartolomeo's gratitude toward the man who befriended him when no one else would and whose friendship now gives him a great deal of privilege he otherwise wouldn't have, is sorely tested when a group of downsiders try to enlist his help in a covert insurrection.
The Captain's chief rival is Bishop Soldano, the leader of the ship's Church (never explicitly named, but clearly a futuristic Catholic sect). Although Soldano is an antagonist, the Church is not the villain here: one of the secondary characters who becomes Bartolomeo's close friend (and the object of his unrequited love) is Father Veronica, who brings a somewhat philosophical spin to the book, though really her conversations with Bartolomeo are pretty rote discussions of free will, the Problem of Evil, and so on.
All this background serves to set up the interpersonal and societal conflicts after the Argonos reaches a world called Antioch, and finds the remains of a human colony. The colonists were slaughtered, in a horrific, nightmarish way. But when the Argonos leaves the planet, they pick up a signal from the erstwhile colony beamed to another point in deep space.
Well, how can they not investigate? Of course it turns out that they really, really shouldn't have.
They find an alien ship — the first encounter with aliens ever recorded — seemingly empty and abandoned. The scenes where Bartolomeo and his boarding crew explore the ship are all the scarier because there aren't any monsters.
Yet.
The ship is creepy and scary and even the most innocuous discoveries are just wrong in all kinds of ways, and you know the whole time (as Bartolomeo does too on some level) that this is Not Going To End Well.
This is a book to which I find comparisons to movies come more readily than comparisons to other books, and that's not a bad thing. Think Alien, Event Horizon, or Lifeforce. (Okay, maybe not Lifeforce — that film was kind of crap.) But you will also find this kind of grimdark pessimistic sci-fi in another little-read favorite of mine, A Grey Moon Over China.
Ship of Fools is space opera + cinematic horror, crossing Big Dumb Object SF with a haunted house. If any of these concepts sound intriguing to you, then you should read it.
The Argonos is a generation ship, run by an Executive Council with nominal authority over the Captain. The first part of the book is largely political machinations: we learn that the Argonos has lost its original mission, or any connection with human civilization elsewhere in the galaxy. They occasionally find human-inhabited colonies, but infrequently and there is no substantial trade or diplomacy. Instead, they've become an insular, closed community, several thousand people divided into "downsiders," who are virtually serfs, and the ship's officers and crew, who spend most of their time playing petty political games.
The main character and first-person narrator is Bartolomeo, an orphan born with stunted limbs and a misshapen spine, which he compensates for with an exoskeleton and prosthetic limbs. Nikos, a childhood friend of Bartolomeo, is now the Captain of the Argonos. Bartolomeo's gratitude toward the man who befriended him when no one else would and whose friendship now gives him a great deal of privilege he otherwise wouldn't have, is sorely tested when a group of downsiders try to enlist his help in a covert insurrection.
The Captain's chief rival is Bishop Soldano, the leader of the ship's Church (never explicitly named, but clearly a futuristic Catholic sect). Although Soldano is an antagonist, the Church is not the villain here: one of the secondary characters who becomes Bartolomeo's close friend (and the object of his unrequited love) is Father Veronica, who brings a somewhat philosophical spin to the book, though really her conversations with Bartolomeo are pretty rote discussions of free will, the Problem of Evil, and so on.
All this background serves to set up the interpersonal and societal conflicts after the Argonos reaches a world called Antioch, and finds the remains of a human colony. The colonists were slaughtered, in a horrific, nightmarish way. But when the Argonos leaves the planet, they pick up a signal from the erstwhile colony beamed to another point in deep space.
Well, how can they not investigate? Of course it turns out that they really, really shouldn't have.
They find an alien ship — the first encounter with aliens ever recorded — seemingly empty and abandoned. The scenes where Bartolomeo and his boarding crew explore the ship are all the scarier because there aren't any monsters.
Yet.
The ship is creepy and scary and even the most innocuous discoveries are just wrong in all kinds of ways, and you know the whole time (as Bartolomeo does too on some level) that this is Not Going To End Well.
This is a book to which I find comparisons to movies come more readily than comparisons to other books, and that's not a bad thing. Think Alien, Event Horizon, or Lifeforce. (Okay, maybe not Lifeforce — that film was kind of crap.) But you will also find this kind of grimdark pessimistic sci-fi in another little-read favorite of mine, A Grey Moon Over China.
Ship of Fools is space opera + cinematic horror, crossing Big Dumb Object SF with a haunted house. If any of these concepts sound intriguing to you, then you should read it.
April 19, 2015
Ship of Fools is atmospheric science fiction with a great premise, which unfortunately runs short out of realizing its full potential. It combines motifs traditionally associated with classic science fiction - space exploration and first contact - and establishes a creepy and suspenseful mood throughout, slowly building its central theme: who are they, and who are we?
The eponymous ship is the Argonos, a massive vessel traversing through the deep space for decades, its original mission long forgotten. No one remembers origins of the ship, and life beyond it; generations of crew and other inhabitants wonder about its - and theirs - purpose. The ship is full of interesting characters, with friendships being formed and rivalries being fought. Various fractions struggle for power over the Argonos, and Russo does a good job of involving the reader with life on the ship by employing a first person narrator - Bartolomeo Aguilera, a man born with physical disabilities which forced him to dependency on prosthetic limbs and an exoskeleton.
Claustrophobic, insular existence on the Argonos would itself provide enough material for an entertaining novel, but there's more to the book than that. On its voyage the ship receives a transmission from a mysterious planet: the expedition sent find remains of a settlement, or colony - with all colonists slaughtered in a bloody and gruesome way, their bloody remains implying a possible ritual sacrifice. Soon after the crew of the Argonos receives another signal, this time coming from ship - an enormous, seemingly abandoned vessel. The new ship. Despite concerns about the new encounter - some crew members sense a mysterious evil and darkness emanating from the ship - another expedition is sent to investigate and explore it.
Despite there being plenty of dark imagery in the book, it's not survival horror as presented in the game Dead Space, which features a lone protagonist trying to find his way out of a spaceship infested with all sorts of scary creatures and occurrences. The mood of the book is much slower and the mood more meditative; as the alien ship is explored, the protagonists focuses more on his inner thoughts and doubts, asking the big questions: is there a God? If there is, how can evil exist in the world? This is commonly known as the Problem of Evil, debated by philosophers and theologians for centuries. However no matter ho interesting it is, I felt that it is never really resolved - the book ends suddenly and unexpectedly, and left me wanting. I could definitely read more about these characters and their exploration of the mysterious colony and the brooding spaceship, but unfortunately this is a case when the slow and atmospheric buildup was not accompanied by an equally atmospheric and shattering payoff.
The eponymous ship is the Argonos, a massive vessel traversing through the deep space for decades, its original mission long forgotten. No one remembers origins of the ship, and life beyond it; generations of crew and other inhabitants wonder about its - and theirs - purpose. The ship is full of interesting characters, with friendships being formed and rivalries being fought. Various fractions struggle for power over the Argonos, and Russo does a good job of involving the reader with life on the ship by employing a first person narrator - Bartolomeo Aguilera, a man born with physical disabilities which forced him to dependency on prosthetic limbs and an exoskeleton.
Claustrophobic, insular existence on the Argonos would itself provide enough material for an entertaining novel, but there's more to the book than that. On its voyage the ship receives a transmission from a mysterious planet: the expedition sent find remains of a settlement, or colony - with all colonists slaughtered in a bloody and gruesome way, their bloody remains implying a possible ritual sacrifice. Soon after the crew of the Argonos receives another signal, this time coming from ship - an enormous, seemingly abandoned vessel. The new ship. Despite concerns about the new encounter - some crew members sense a mysterious evil and darkness emanating from the ship - another expedition is sent to investigate and explore it.
Despite there being plenty of dark imagery in the book, it's not survival horror as presented in the game Dead Space, which features a lone protagonist trying to find his way out of a spaceship infested with all sorts of scary creatures and occurrences. The mood of the book is much slower and the mood more meditative; as the alien ship is explored, the protagonists focuses more on his inner thoughts and doubts, asking the big questions: is there a God? If there is, how can evil exist in the world? This is commonly known as the Problem of Evil, debated by philosophers and theologians for centuries. However no matter ho interesting it is, I felt that it is never really resolved - the book ends suddenly and unexpectedly, and left me wanting. I could definitely read more about these characters and their exploration of the mysterious colony and the brooding spaceship, but unfortunately this is a case when the slow and atmospheric buildup was not accompanied by an equally atmospheric and shattering payoff.
February 25, 2020
Ship of Fools follows a generational ship without a mission. The people of the Argonos desire to find a habitable planet and civilization in hopes of gaining new information. But they have no idea why or how they came to exist aboard the ark. Some believe the ship has always existed, while others believe it originated on Earth. They have no answers, but they think they have found a habitable planet to investigate and questions arise.
At first, I did not like the lack of detail within the book, but I now see this as a way of expressing the bleakness and pointlessness that those aboard the ark experience. There is a mundanity to their existence that cannot be overcome. What I do think is lacking from Ship of Fools is atmosphere. There is a constant sense of dread present on the ship, due to the ambivalence of their situation, but this dread is not fully fleshed out when dire moments are actually taking place. It could have been scarier. But this did not hinder my reading experience. There is a touch of nihilism with a longing for hopefulness that works well.
One of my favorite moments from the book is a discussion about free will and God’s allowance of suffering. This insightful interpretation of free will argues that freedom does not exist without choice, and this choice cannot exist without the differentiation between good and evil. If evil is not an option, there is no free will. I don’t consider myself a theist, but this interpretation made me rethink my opinion on the existence of suffering in a God-oriented society. It was touching.
At first, I did not like the lack of detail within the book, but I now see this as a way of expressing the bleakness and pointlessness that those aboard the ark experience. There is a mundanity to their existence that cannot be overcome. What I do think is lacking from Ship of Fools is atmosphere. There is a constant sense of dread present on the ship, due to the ambivalence of their situation, but this dread is not fully fleshed out when dire moments are actually taking place. It could have been scarier. But this did not hinder my reading experience. There is a touch of nihilism with a longing for hopefulness that works well.
One of my favorite moments from the book is a discussion about free will and God’s allowance of suffering. This insightful interpretation of free will argues that freedom does not exist without choice, and this choice cannot exist without the differentiation between good and evil. If evil is not an option, there is no free will. I don’t consider myself a theist, but this interpretation made me rethink my opinion on the existence of suffering in a God-oriented society. It was touching.
June 12, 2007
A promising start, interesting characters, and some ambitious questions. Unfortunately, it all falls apart in an anticlimactic ending.
Imagine this conversation and -- SPOILER WARNING -- you'll have the book in a nutshell:
"That ship is evil."
"There's no such thing as evil."
"That ship is evil."
"Evil may exist, but that ship isn't it."
"That ship is evil."
"Oh my god! That ship is evil!"
Imagine this conversation and -- SPOILER WARNING -- you'll have the book in a nutshell:
"That ship is evil."
"There's no such thing as evil."
"That ship is evil."
"Evil may exist, but that ship isn't it."
"That ship is evil."
"Oh my god! That ship is evil!"
February 3, 2018
SUMMARY: In the end, the book is a not-very-effective haunted house story interlaced with a bare-bones attempt to discuss a few ideas. The Alien Ship in question remains a total mystery to the reader which undercuts any sort of understanding. The book builds up to a very brief payoff around the three-quarters mark, but that's solved almost immediately. The ideas discussed in the book are discussed exceptionally briefly and as a philosophical sketch more than anything. The main character is generally unlikable and the only character that is interesting is mostly relegated to "total villain" status.
There were some effective scenes, but they connected to and resulted in very little in terms of actual events, which is disappointing.
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Minor Spoilers Below
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The best way to characterize this novel, I think, is: haunted house story with spaceships. Only secondarily would I call it a "book of ideas."
That may sound reductionist (and to some degree it is), but I think that captures most of the essence of the story. In brief, what happens is that the generation ship Argonos is going around searching for worlds to colonize and has been doing it for so long they literally can't remember when the ship was built. They come to a world, which they call Antioch, and explore the abandoned settlement there, where they discover signs of a slaughter that makes them retreat back to the ship. Later on, they discover an alien spaceship nearby. The rest of the novel is more or less about exploring the alien ship, which seems to be possessed by some malevolent force.
So, basically: find ship, explore ship, creepy things happen, try to run away from ship. It's basically the standard haunted house plot--find house, explore house, creepies happen, escape from house. But it doesn't do it all that well.
The difficulty is that the book seems to be marketed as a "book of ideas," which seems like it would sort of let it off the hook. After all, theoretically a "book of ideas" can have a little slackness in the plot department so long as it deals with the ideas well. But the book doesn't, really. There are a few segments--I can count them on one hand--where they discuss an actual abstract idea, but they're brief and fairly shallow. At one point, two main characters enter into a discussion of theodicy ("why does God allow evil to happen"). The discussion is maybe about two or three pages long and consists mostly of one of the characters giving a Deism for Dummies monologue, after which the subject is dropped. There are a number of other topics that the book briefly touches on (or suggests) but never actually explores, which is frustrating.
So on the one hand, we have a book of ideas that doesn't really explore ideas. On the other, we have a fairly ineffective haunted house story. The two are fine together, but one of them has to pick up the slack for the other. In this book, neither do, and we're let down at the end.
I should expand a bit on why I felt the "haunted house" angle was ineffective as the book implemented it.
In the book, the Alien Ship is described as unfathomable and unknowable--there's a suggestion throughout the book that the Ship itself is somehow "alive," or is at least capable of conscious action. That never goes away and we readers are left with no idea what the ship is, or wants, or its wider purpose. Even in movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we're given a reason--the guy and his family are cannibals and they want human meat. And even in books where an explicit aim is not stated, we can intuit something about it--Hill House wants to keep Eleanor there forever with the rest of the spirits. Cujo, whose entire practical purpose of the book was to be a murderdog, is given at least some reason why he acts the way he does. Even in Lovecraft, whose antagonists are *meant* to be unfathomable, have at least some logic behind the terror: Deep Ones want to breed with us, Cthulhu predates and shatters the psyche.
We don't have that here besides "the Ship wants to kill us." We don't know why, we don't know why it needs to kill, and we don't ever figure out what it precisely is. Why does the ship switch on gravity and kill a character? Just because. Why does the ship kill colonies and put people on meathooks? Just because. Why does the ship make people crazy and want to commit suicide? Just because.
This isn't inherently bad. Books have pulled it off before--like Haunting of Hill House, which doesn't provide a strong motivation for Hill House--but the horror in those books comes from the interplay of that seat of malevolence and the characters themselves, exploring the depths of their established minds. Was Eleanor really seeing ghosts, or was she losing touch with reality? Did she die in a simple car accident, or was Hill House involved and finally took her? The characterization and ambiguity have to be there.
We don't get that here. We have a few incidents of psychosis among the explorers of the ship, but the story itself underlines that there was nothing wrong with them beforehand. The secondary characters are poorly fleshed out, but there's no question even then that the ship managed to find a psychic lever for these people. The ship made them go crazy just because that's apparently what you do. A character is made to commit suicide by the ship, and we're informed that he would never have even thought of it beforehand. The main characters are otherwise totally unaffected.
Even further, in books and stories where the antagonist force *does* simply kill "just because," there's an internal logic there. Cthulhu drives men mad and that's scary because it underscores our fear of our own insignificance in the universe, a universe where we mean less than nothing. The Walking Man seems to kill "just because," but, for instance in The Stand, that seems to be more or less his purpose: he exists in fear and hate and carnage, the demand for Order turned bloody. He's a reflection of the worst in us and that attracts the worst in us. But there's no logic with the ship: it clings onto the status of "unknown," perhaps, because there's nothing else there, no internal logic to it in the context of the story that connects it to a truly scary concept.
So there's a ship that wants to kill everyone aboard the Argonos for a reason no one can discern (not even the reader) that doesn't much effect the main character. We're just told that creepy things happen for some reason.
Many books do this as the ramp-up to a payoff later on in the story, but here the payoff never happens. There's one fairly creepy event, but it's solved almost immediately by the main character, and it happens three quarters into the book and nothing like it ever occurs again. When I read it, I thought it was going to get that payoff--but I didn't. The book then turns into a protracted escape sequence where the inhabitants attempt to flee the Argonos, and nothing particularly frightening or even tense happens there.
That brings us to the characters. None of them is particularly interesting.
The main character, Bartolomeo, is fairly unlikeable. He's not ever very convincing, though the book seems to disagree: there are several instances where he has to make a minor oration to convince the council of something. The oration itself is bland and deeply unconvincing, yet he somehow carries the day. There's a lot of talk about him being crippled, but it doesn't seem to hold him back that much. He talks about how much he's despised for his infirmity, but you don't see that much of that aside from people disliking him for actual things he's done. He has the confidence and friendship of the captain, the respect of his crew and subordinates, and his only real antagonist is the power-hungry Bishop who's mostly against Bartolomeo because the Bishop's against the captain.
Father Veronica is more palatable, but not massively so. She's more or less the philosophical mouthpiece of the book, but it never gets much beyond lone pronouncements and very brief conversations where her word seems to be given as law. Despite being perhaps the second main character, she's seen relatively infrequently. There's also a (thankfully brief and abortive) attempt to shoehorn her in as a sort of love interest.
Then you have the Bishop, the human antagonist of the novel. I'd argue that he's actually one of the stronger, more interesting characters. A powerful figure on this ship and ambitious, the Bishop actually did have a sincere faith in God and the Church at one point, but unknowingly abandoned that faith over years of politicking and power-seeking. When the Bishop finally realizes how far he has fallen and how much he's lost, it's one of the more powerful moments of pathos in the novel--but the author glosses it over and Bartolomeo blows it off. At the end, he seems to realize he cannot be saved and so (essentially) abdicates and surrenders himself to his end. Again, this is unremarked upon and blown off when, in reality, it's basically the one moment of character growth and redemption (or, rather, an attempt at redemption) in the novel. The book also seems to overlook the fact that, a lot of the time, he's actually *right,* but Bartolomeo just chalks up his opposition to politicking and enmity.
Most other characters are barebones. The Captain seems legitimately well-meaning, if at times desperate to hold on to power. Par, a dwarf from the lower classes, has a larger role in the very beginning of the book, but beyond that is basically just another talking head.
In the end, the book is a not-very-effective haunted house story interlaced with a bare-bones attempt to discuss a few ideas. The Alien Ship in question remains a total mystery to the reader which undercuts any sort of understanding. The book builds up to a very brief payoff around the three-quarters mark, but that's solved almost immediately. The ideas discussed in the book are discussed exceptionally briefly and as a philosophical sketch more than anything. The main character is generally unlikable and the only character that is interesting is mostly relegated to "total villain" status.
There were some effective scenes, but they connected to and resulted in very little in terms of actual events, which is disappointing.
There were some effective scenes, but they connected to and resulted in very little in terms of actual events, which is disappointing.
==========
Minor Spoilers Below
==========
The best way to characterize this novel, I think, is: haunted house story with spaceships. Only secondarily would I call it a "book of ideas."
That may sound reductionist (and to some degree it is), but I think that captures most of the essence of the story. In brief, what happens is that the generation ship Argonos is going around searching for worlds to colonize and has been doing it for so long they literally can't remember when the ship was built. They come to a world, which they call Antioch, and explore the abandoned settlement there, where they discover signs of a slaughter that makes them retreat back to the ship. Later on, they discover an alien spaceship nearby. The rest of the novel is more or less about exploring the alien ship, which seems to be possessed by some malevolent force.
So, basically: find ship, explore ship, creepy things happen, try to run away from ship. It's basically the standard haunted house plot--find house, explore house, creepies happen, escape from house. But it doesn't do it all that well.
The difficulty is that the book seems to be marketed as a "book of ideas," which seems like it would sort of let it off the hook. After all, theoretically a "book of ideas" can have a little slackness in the plot department so long as it deals with the ideas well. But the book doesn't, really. There are a few segments--I can count them on one hand--where they discuss an actual abstract idea, but they're brief and fairly shallow. At one point, two main characters enter into a discussion of theodicy ("why does God allow evil to happen"). The discussion is maybe about two or three pages long and consists mostly of one of the characters giving a Deism for Dummies monologue, after which the subject is dropped. There are a number of other topics that the book briefly touches on (or suggests) but never actually explores, which is frustrating.
So on the one hand, we have a book of ideas that doesn't really explore ideas. On the other, we have a fairly ineffective haunted house story. The two are fine together, but one of them has to pick up the slack for the other. In this book, neither do, and we're let down at the end.
I should expand a bit on why I felt the "haunted house" angle was ineffective as the book implemented it.
In the book, the Alien Ship is described as unfathomable and unknowable--there's a suggestion throughout the book that the Ship itself is somehow "alive," or is at least capable of conscious action. That never goes away and we readers are left with no idea what the ship is, or wants, or its wider purpose. Even in movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we're given a reason--the guy and his family are cannibals and they want human meat. And even in books where an explicit aim is not stated, we can intuit something about it--Hill House wants to keep Eleanor there forever with the rest of the spirits. Cujo, whose entire practical purpose of the book was to be a murderdog, is given at least some reason why he acts the way he does. Even in Lovecraft, whose antagonists are *meant* to be unfathomable, have at least some logic behind the terror: Deep Ones want to breed with us, Cthulhu predates and shatters the psyche.
We don't have that here besides "the Ship wants to kill us." We don't know why, we don't know why it needs to kill, and we don't ever figure out what it precisely is. Why does the ship switch on gravity and kill a character? Just because. Why does the ship kill colonies and put people on meathooks? Just because. Why does the ship make people crazy and want to commit suicide? Just because.
This isn't inherently bad. Books have pulled it off before--like Haunting of Hill House, which doesn't provide a strong motivation for Hill House--but the horror in those books comes from the interplay of that seat of malevolence and the characters themselves, exploring the depths of their established minds. Was Eleanor really seeing ghosts, or was she losing touch with reality? Did she die in a simple car accident, or was Hill House involved and finally took her? The characterization and ambiguity have to be there.
We don't get that here. We have a few incidents of psychosis among the explorers of the ship, but the story itself underlines that there was nothing wrong with them beforehand. The secondary characters are poorly fleshed out, but there's no question even then that the ship managed to find a psychic lever for these people. The ship made them go crazy just because that's apparently what you do. A character is made to commit suicide by the ship, and we're informed that he would never have even thought of it beforehand. The main characters are otherwise totally unaffected.
Even further, in books and stories where the antagonist force *does* simply kill "just because," there's an internal logic there. Cthulhu drives men mad and that's scary because it underscores our fear of our own insignificance in the universe, a universe where we mean less than nothing. The Walking Man seems to kill "just because," but, for instance in The Stand, that seems to be more or less his purpose: he exists in fear and hate and carnage, the demand for Order turned bloody. He's a reflection of the worst in us and that attracts the worst in us. But there's no logic with the ship: it clings onto the status of "unknown," perhaps, because there's nothing else there, no internal logic to it in the context of the story that connects it to a truly scary concept.
So there's a ship that wants to kill everyone aboard the Argonos for a reason no one can discern (not even the reader) that doesn't much effect the main character. We're just told that creepy things happen for some reason.
Many books do this as the ramp-up to a payoff later on in the story, but here the payoff never happens. There's one fairly creepy event, but it's solved almost immediately by the main character, and it happens three quarters into the book and nothing like it ever occurs again. When I read it, I thought it was going to get that payoff--but I didn't. The book then turns into a protracted escape sequence where the inhabitants attempt to flee the Argonos, and nothing particularly frightening or even tense happens there.
That brings us to the characters. None of them is particularly interesting.
The main character, Bartolomeo, is fairly unlikeable. He's not ever very convincing, though the book seems to disagree: there are several instances where he has to make a minor oration to convince the council of something. The oration itself is bland and deeply unconvincing, yet he somehow carries the day. There's a lot of talk about him being crippled, but it doesn't seem to hold him back that much. He talks about how much he's despised for his infirmity, but you don't see that much of that aside from people disliking him for actual things he's done. He has the confidence and friendship of the captain, the respect of his crew and subordinates, and his only real antagonist is the power-hungry Bishop who's mostly against Bartolomeo because the Bishop's against the captain.
Father Veronica is more palatable, but not massively so. She's more or less the philosophical mouthpiece of the book, but it never gets much beyond lone pronouncements and very brief conversations where her word seems to be given as law. Despite being perhaps the second main character, she's seen relatively infrequently. There's also a (thankfully brief and abortive) attempt to shoehorn her in as a sort of love interest.
Then you have the Bishop, the human antagonist of the novel. I'd argue that he's actually one of the stronger, more interesting characters. A powerful figure on this ship and ambitious, the Bishop actually did have a sincere faith in God and the Church at one point, but unknowingly abandoned that faith over years of politicking and power-seeking. When the Bishop finally realizes how far he has fallen and how much he's lost, it's one of the more powerful moments of pathos in the novel--but the author glosses it over and Bartolomeo blows it off. At the end, he seems to realize he cannot be saved and so (essentially) abdicates and surrenders himself to his end. Again, this is unremarked upon and blown off when, in reality, it's basically the one moment of character growth and redemption (or, rather, an attempt at redemption) in the novel. The book also seems to overlook the fact that, a lot of the time, he's actually *right,* but Bartolomeo just chalks up his opposition to politicking and enmity.
Most other characters are barebones. The Captain seems legitimately well-meaning, if at times desperate to hold on to power. Par, a dwarf from the lower classes, has a larger role in the very beginning of the book, but beyond that is basically just another talking head.
In the end, the book is a not-very-effective haunted house story interlaced with a bare-bones attempt to discuss a few ideas. The Alien Ship in question remains a total mystery to the reader which undercuts any sort of understanding. The book builds up to a very brief payoff around the three-quarters mark, but that's solved almost immediately. The ideas discussed in the book are discussed exceptionally briefly and as a philosophical sketch more than anything. The main character is generally unlikable and the only character that is interesting is mostly relegated to "total villain" status.
There were some effective scenes, but they connected to and resulted in very little in terms of actual events, which is disappointing.
April 1, 2018
I liked reading this book and thought the pacing was great and the story was pretty cool but upon finishing I was left unsatisfied and felt sort of let down. Nothing too memorable on any front from this, and the story for me at least slowed down towards the end. Overall I'm left with the impression that there was a lot of buildup but not a lot of payoff.
September 16, 2016
Ship of Fools reminds me of the prevalent hubris in current world politics. "You are either with us, or against us". There is no middle ground. You cannot debate about political ideology without alienating one or the other camp. You are either on the extreme left or extreme right. And good luck to you if you try to convince the group who you are debating against to believe otherwise. That's why I have stopped discussing politics on the internet. And to be honest, everybody wants to toot their own horn, nobody is here to enlighten themselves. They are already here to tell us their preconceived views and ideas. We are drifting in the endless universe, believing that we know the right direction in which we should take our world, if only the idiots on the other side would leave us in peace and let us do our work.
'Argonos' is one such generation ship in Ship of Fools, whose objective was lost generations ago. The ship is divided in mainly two factions. One religious, the other not. The story follows a character named Bartolomeo, our protagonist and first person narrator. Richard Paul Russo sacrifices all the usual tropes of space opera to develop the characters. As the story progresses, the line between 'good' and 'bad' starts to fade, and in the end it is left up to the readers to decide what they would have done in a similar situation.
I generally avoid talking about the exact plot of the books that I read, because I have found that sometimes they give away way too much. And while the plot of the book is secondary here (amazing really, I never thought that I would say something like this for a space opera/ science fiction), I still believe you would enjoy this book much more if you dived right into its pages (not literally, but it would be mind-boggling if you could accomplish that).
November 23, 2017
Ciencia ficción a la vieja usanza, de la que no necesita explicar cada gadget o innovación tecnológica que sugiere, lo cual es de agradecer cuando lo que buscas es un libro que te saque del estancamiento. Atrapa de principio a fin, pero no deja secuelas más allá de un par de magníficas imágenes, de esas que solo la cf puede crear. Una historia que suma subgéneros y temáticas. Cf terrorífica de tintes religiosos con una nave generacional y un misterioso artefacto extraterrestre en el centro de la trama. A ratos Event Horizon, a ratos Esfera, a ratos El laberinto de la Luna, aunque no acaba de decantarse por ninguna de esas referencias. La naturaleza de la amenaza no queda nada clara, como mandan los cánones. Personajes poco complejos pero bien definidos y alguna decisión argumental desacertada, como el intento de asesinato en la catedral, de un modo totalmente innecesario. Un libro muy entretenido y recomendable como remedio antibloqueo.
May 27, 2016
Recently I read a scifi book that made me rethink my normal avoidance of the genre. With that in mind, I tried Ship of Fools and it didn't disappoint. The things that interest me in books are primarily the inner worlds of characters, psychology and so on and Ship of Fools certainly satisfies in that respect, the scifi aspect is merely the framing within which the story unfolds. In fact, except for the very end, which got somewhat genre technical, the story wasn't even strongly genre specific. If a genre had to be ascribed to it, it would be something along scifi horror, resonantly on the darker side. A ship traveling through space for generations, destination and goals forgotten, a ship that has long become its own almost entirely self sufficient micro universe down to the social castes, encounters a devastated planet and subsequently a seemingly empty (terrifyingly so) eerie alien spacecraft. That's the basic plot, but of course like in any good story there are many subplots and themes, meditations on freedom, beliefs, love, free will and choices. The reader experiences this world through the eyes of a something of an outsider, a topside (elite) denizen, who isn't particularly liked or popular, an intelligent, somewhat aloof loner. And yet he makes for a very compelling narrator and actually serves as a moral compass (and a propeller for that matter) for the story throughout all its twists and turns. Very enjoyable read. Recommended.
March 3, 2024
"Event Horizon" meets "Blindsight" in this thought-provoking first contact novel. The writing is excellent and maintains an atmosphere of creepy mystery throughout. But the pace slackers off toward the (unsatisfying) ending, the philosophical avenues remain unexplored, and too many loose ends are not pursued. 3.75 stars, rounded up.
February 22, 2023
When I finished this book last night I was grumpy. I hated the ending, so I slapped a 3-star rating on it and immediately distanced myself from it by running headlong into my next book. To be fair, the story wasn't just good, it was great, so today I've corrected my hasty rating but I'm going to make it clear that the end of this story is a major let down.
As soon as I started this story I was hooked. The writing is anything but fancy and yet the plot continually emerged and evolved so naturally from the simple narrative and it kept my interest all the way through to the crushing disappointment of an ending. From the way the story is told, the twists really do seem to come from out of nowhere and over the course of your journey through these pages you'll realise that there be dragons in the unexplored regions of this newly imagined world.
Humanity seems to have largely left Earth behind on various exploratory and colonisation missions. We follow events on one particular ship, as they make their first planetfall after decades of searching. After leaving the planet they head for a massive derelict which turns out to harbour much more than they've bargained for.
Part mystery and part horror story, but mostly this story served as a contemplation of religion and faith and honour and best intentions. I'll be honest, I thought some of the reflection came across as too apologist but I thought in general it was a fair representation.
The characters were all excellent. The relationships delightfully complex. And the eerie situations we encounter in this plot will thrill fans of scifi and fans of horror, both.
But be fully warned that the ending leaves questions unanswered, fates unknown and even though there's more than enough room to follow this up in a sequel, it has been 21 years since publication and there's still no book two in sight.
Be prepared to enjoy this all the way up until it let's you down. Like your ex did.
As soon as I started this story I was hooked. The writing is anything but fancy and yet the plot continually emerged and evolved so naturally from the simple narrative and it kept my interest all the way through to the crushing disappointment of an ending. From the way the story is told, the twists really do seem to come from out of nowhere and over the course of your journey through these pages you'll realise that there be dragons in the unexplored regions of this newly imagined world.
Humanity seems to have largely left Earth behind on various exploratory and colonisation missions. We follow events on one particular ship, as they make their first planetfall after decades of searching. After leaving the planet they head for a massive derelict which turns out to harbour much more than they've bargained for.
Part mystery and part horror story, but mostly this story served as a contemplation of religion and faith and honour and best intentions. I'll be honest, I thought some of the reflection came across as too apologist but I thought in general it was a fair representation.
The characters were all excellent. The relationships delightfully complex. And the eerie situations we encounter in this plot will thrill fans of scifi and fans of horror, both.
But be fully warned that the ending leaves questions unanswered, fates unknown and even though there's more than enough room to follow this up in a sequel, it has been 21 years since publication and there's still no book two in sight.
Be prepared to enjoy this all the way up until it let's you down. Like your ex did.
October 14, 2022
This book royally shits the bed in its last 60 pages or so. Before that it's a thoughtful book about encountering an alien ship, exploring it and trying to understand what is fundamentally alien.
It reminded me a bit of Stanislaw Lem, the technical bits being less important, than how humans think about the truly alien.
And then it becomes action-y, and it lacks any tension - partly because the characters barely show any sense of urgency, but also their plans tend to work, without much going wrong. That's no fun.
Some of the dialogue becomes ridiculously melodramatic. A character's name is repeatedly shouted, appearing as all caps in the text. The inner editor in me recoils. One time the name is shouted in all caps, with two exclamation points. The inner editor in me starts day drinking.
Why are story elements introduced, when they're then easily dispatched with? What's the point? It comes across to me as fundamentally misunderstanding how to tell a proper story. It's what I would call bad writing.
Plenty questions remain unanswered, which is if course fine in a book about the unknowable, but now I've started mistrusting the author's capability, and some of the unanswered questions feel like bad writing.
Pretty bad book, guys.
It reminded me a bit of Stanislaw Lem, the technical bits being less important, than how humans think about the truly alien.
And then it becomes action-y, and it lacks any tension - partly because the characters barely show any sense of urgency, but also their plans tend to work, without much going wrong. That's no fun.
Some of the dialogue becomes ridiculously melodramatic. A character's name is repeatedly shouted, appearing as all caps in the text. The inner editor in me recoils. One time the name is shouted in all caps, with two exclamation points. The inner editor in me starts day drinking.
Why are story elements introduced, when they're then easily dispatched with? What's the point? It comes across to me as fundamentally misunderstanding how to tell a proper story. It's what I would call bad writing.
Plenty questions remain unanswered, which is if course fine in a book about the unknowable, but now I've started mistrusting the author's capability, and some of the unanswered questions feel like bad writing.
Pretty bad book, guys.
January 2, 2015
5 Stars
Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo is a surprise of hit to me. This is the first time that I have read this author, but surely not the last. Russo has created a wonderful piece of survival science fiction that has a bit of a horror feel as well. This is not hard science, and it is easily accessible to those that normally veer from the genre.
Russo drops us right into the middle of the story. I am not going to summarize much as it would spoil this adventure. The writing, the plot, and the strong cast of characters make this a fast paced easy read. Bartolomeo is an exceptional main protagonist and I found his story and his point of view to be the highlight of this great read. Russo ramps up the dread and doom with a slow hand and by the end result of this book all seems lost. I loved the way the story, the characters, and the setting all followed in the build up of the "we are all totally f@&$ed" scenario. It was brilliant.
This book would make a spectacular movie. I loved this book and so will you.
Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo is a surprise of hit to me. This is the first time that I have read this author, but surely not the last. Russo has created a wonderful piece of survival science fiction that has a bit of a horror feel as well. This is not hard science, and it is easily accessible to those that normally veer from the genre.
Russo drops us right into the middle of the story. I am not going to summarize much as it would spoil this adventure. The writing, the plot, and the strong cast of characters make this a fast paced easy read. Bartolomeo is an exceptional main protagonist and I found his story and his point of view to be the highlight of this great read. Russo ramps up the dread and doom with a slow hand and by the end result of this book all seems lost. I loved the way the story, the characters, and the setting all followed in the build up of the "we are all totally f@&$ed" scenario. It was brilliant.
This book would make a spectacular movie. I loved this book and so will you.
March 28, 2017
Such an excellent sci-fi read. I loved it. As soon as I finished reading it -- no joke -- I went right back to the first page and started reading it again.
I am almost always thankful for short chapters, but I was especially thankful for them in this book because there was a section that was so intense I needed those breaks to let my heart get back to a normal rhythm. Full on!
This book had the same atmosphere as the movie Event Horizon. And Ghost Ship. I loved it. I've also watched my husband play two Xbox games that reminded me of this book: Inside and Limbo. It also reminded me of Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days. Just thought I'd throw that info out there for you all. I'd whole-heartedly recommend it to sci-fi fans.
●A big thank you to Jacob at Red Star Reviews for recommending this to me●
I am almost always thankful for short chapters, but I was especially thankful for them in this book because there was a section that was so intense I needed those breaks to let my heart get back to a normal rhythm. Full on!
This book had the same atmosphere as the movie Event Horizon. And Ghost Ship. I loved it. I've also watched my husband play two Xbox games that reminded me of this book: Inside and Limbo. It also reminded me of Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days. Just thought I'd throw that info out there for you all. I'd whole-heartedly recommend it to sci-fi fans.
●A big thank you to Jacob at Red Star Reviews for recommending this to me●
August 4, 2011
Titled "Unto Leviathan" in England from whence it came, this story really captured my imagination. As I am a sucker for atmosphere, the generational starship on which most of the story takes place is filled with it. The dynastic aspect of the leadership, the striation of the crew by social class, the religious influence on the masses; all of it subject to the view of the protagonist. He is perhaps the sole well rounded person in the story, and though he is intelligent, he is not the only smart character. Indeed, the others are smart enough to be dangerous and this fills the story with intrigue from the first page.
They don't have anyplace to go, they are generations removed from their original mission. Their origins are clouded in mystery as is the fate/condition of the rest of humanity. But they encounter an alien site during planetfall, and later, a ship where nothing makes sense.
While the climax is indeed set to race your pulse, what it lacks is a definitive BANG! Still, it satisfies because the best explosions are sometimes the ones that happen when we're running away and not looking back to see them.
They don't have anyplace to go, they are generations removed from their original mission. Their origins are clouded in mystery as is the fate/condition of the rest of humanity. But they encounter an alien site during planetfall, and later, a ship where nothing makes sense.
While the climax is indeed set to race your pulse, what it lacks is a definitive BANG! Still, it satisfies because the best explosions are sometimes the ones that happen when we're running away and not looking back to see them.
August 14, 2023
Great story with incredible characters. It is long, however, not long enough, in my opinion. I wanted more from the ending, an extended epilogue, perhaps.
Overall, it was very interesting, definitely tense and frightening components. I'm very glad I read this. I am enjoying the sci-fi horror genre!
Overall, it was very interesting, definitely tense and frightening components. I'm very glad I read this. I am enjoying the sci-fi horror genre!
November 29, 2020
Entretenida. Echaba de menos leer algo de terror espacial. En realidad, esta novela es un "remake" de "La nave abandonada", de Hodgson, pero en el espacio. La primera parte resulta sobresaliente, la segunda decae un poco. El momento álgido, cuando se topan con el misterioso navío que, en apariencia, está abandonado. Lo mejor, que me lo he pasado bastante bien leyéndola.
January 2, 2021
Science Fiction used to be my jam. Back in the 80s and 90s, when my reading addiction really took hold, this was when I was reading the greats from such authors as Arthur C. Clarke, John Varley, etc.
Into the 2000s, unfortunately, my interest was waning because I just couldn't find anything that could capture me like the masters did. Far too many recent submissions to the genre became too politically charged and self-important. I just wanted a sense of wonder and escape.
I've started hitting Reddit quite a bit recently. The book groups there are fantastic, with very respectful and helpful members. I decided to search for one of my favourite sci-fi reads of all time, Rendezvous With Rama, and see what lists I could find that had other favourites listed with it. That's how I found out about Ship of Fools. I had never even heard of it, which just goes to show how distanced I had gotten from the genre (it was nominated for the Locus award in 2002).
This book really hit my check boxes. There was good character development, and, similar to Rendezvous With Rama, a sense of discovery and suspenseful mystery surrounding first contact with aliens. Oh, and some dashes of horror to really ratchet things up.
One of Russo's skills that really impressed me was creating a sense of space (no pun intended) without confusing over-descriptiveness (something else that can drive me from the genre). At no point whatsoever was I unable to totally visualize what he was describing. It is truly a gift to do that with simple descriptions.
The list that I found on Reddit that had this book was appropriate. The novel is, in one aspect, quite similar to Rendezvous With Rama. As far as the ending went, I was a little disappointed that some things weren't fully resolved. But mostly I'm okay with that. I am even more okay that this is a standalone (these are becoming unicorns)!
I'll give this a strong four stars, and my heartfelt thanks to Richard Paul Russo for bringing me back to the genre.
Actually, no. My little bit of pickiness doesn't deserve a star docking. It's a big thing for me to find Sci-Fi that I like, and this really was a cool story.
Five it is! Well done, RPR.
Into the 2000s, unfortunately, my interest was waning because I just couldn't find anything that could capture me like the masters did. Far too many recent submissions to the genre became too politically charged and self-important. I just wanted a sense of wonder and escape.
I've started hitting Reddit quite a bit recently. The book groups there are fantastic, with very respectful and helpful members. I decided to search for one of my favourite sci-fi reads of all time, Rendezvous With Rama, and see what lists I could find that had other favourites listed with it. That's how I found out about Ship of Fools. I had never even heard of it, which just goes to show how distanced I had gotten from the genre (it was nominated for the Locus award in 2002).
This book really hit my check boxes. There was good character development, and, similar to Rendezvous With Rama, a sense of discovery and suspenseful mystery surrounding first contact with aliens. Oh, and some dashes of horror to really ratchet things up.
One of Russo's skills that really impressed me was creating a sense of space (no pun intended) without confusing over-descriptiveness (something else that can drive me from the genre). At no point whatsoever was I unable to totally visualize what he was describing. It is truly a gift to do that with simple descriptions.
The list that I found on Reddit that had this book was appropriate. The novel is, in one aspect, quite similar to Rendezvous With Rama. As far as the ending went, I was a little disappointed that some things weren't fully resolved. But mostly I'm okay with that. I am even more okay that this is a standalone (these are becoming unicorns)!
I'll give this a strong four stars, and my heartfelt thanks to Richard Paul Russo for bringing me back to the genre.
Actually, no. My little bit of pickiness doesn't deserve a star docking. It's a big thing for me to find Sci-Fi that I like, and this really was a cool story.
Five it is! Well done, RPR.
July 3, 2017
I didn't initially feel like this was going to be a five star book. It was pitched to me as a religious generation ship (which it is) and a big dumb object (which there is) and it was interesting, but seemed to fall pretty squarely in the Venn diagram of those tropes. The writing lacked the gravitas that I normally find in books that I rate 5 stars. But I loved what the book had to say about religion, societal stagnation, and helplessness. The writing helped all of those things, on the surface by not getting in the way by being overly stylistic, but deeper, but letting things speak for themselves, by showing without always drawing conclusions for the reader. I've read plenty of big dumb object and generation ship books and this one doesn't transcend or turn the genre on its head, but it is a very very good book.
August 20, 2018
Pasable libro de horror espacial. El primer tramo de la novela, con esa gran nave atiborrada de personas explorando un planeta que encuentran y los horrores que allí descubren está entretenido.
La segunda parte del libro mantiene el suspense com esa nave extraterrestre que encuentran en medio del espacio pero todo se viene abajo con un final que no nos da respuestas y que el autor intenta ligar con un batiburrillo de referencias bíblicas que destrozan el ritmo y hacen el libro muy pesado.
Hubiera sido una buena novela si al menos hubiese contestado a esas preguntas.
La segunda parte del libro mantiene el suspense com esa nave extraterrestre que encuentran en medio del espacio pero todo se viene abajo con un final que no nos da respuestas y que el autor intenta ligar con un batiburrillo de referencias bíblicas que destrozan el ritmo y hacen el libro muy pesado.
Hubiera sido una buena novela si al menos hubiese contestado a esas preguntas.
January 19, 2018
I did not have high expectations about this book, but I really enjoyed it. Seemed quite cliche at first (generation ship, lack of a real mission, command struggles), but quickly moved beyond triteness. Somewhat macabre, somewhat mysterious, yet oddly hopeful. Like others, I was not really satisfied with the ending.
July 18, 2022
Not what I was expecting at all, but super pleasantly surprised. Found this one in an r/horrorlit thread asking for books similar to the film Event Horizon. What I was expecting? The Hellbound Heart in space. What I got? Thought provoking philosophical cosmic horror about God, organized religion, zealotry and the means of control, the unknown and the terror of the unknowable.
I can understand some of the reviewers who complained about nothing really happening. Going into this book thinking it's pulpy space horror about a spooky alien ship and then getting bait and switched into slow low-action creeping philosophical horror might not be everyone's cup of tea. It is mine though.
My biggest complaint is probably that it was a little bit too predictable. Not very twisty or revelatory, once it gets in swing there aren't a lot of surprises. The methods of how it gets to where it's going are fun and interesting, but where it's going doesn't veer too far off the map. Also the writing is a bit flat and boring. Procedural and perfunctory. Adequate and clean, but completely devoid of any sort of flourish or authorial voice.
I can understand some of the reviewers who complained about nothing really happening. Going into this book thinking it's pulpy space horror about a spooky alien ship and then getting bait and switched into slow low-action creeping philosophical horror might not be everyone's cup of tea. It is mine though.
My biggest complaint is probably that it was a little bit too predictable. Not very twisty or revelatory, once it gets in swing there aren't a lot of surprises. The methods of how it gets to where it's going are fun and interesting, but where it's going doesn't veer too far off the map. Also the writing is a bit flat and boring. Procedural and perfunctory. Adequate and clean, but completely devoid of any sort of flourish or authorial voice.
February 19, 2014
Unbelievable. Absolutely one of my favorite works of all time. This novel took every one of my silly institutionalized expectations developed over the years of literary criticism and research and simply undermined them into unnecessary formulations of prose. Russo, killed the game right here if you ask me.
Although, this may not be one of the most literary pieces; I still find that analysis could take place on several channels. There is plenty to observe, learn and discuss in this book. The economics of the ship, the powers of the church, the mission of the Argonos, the agency of the characters, etc.
After reading the final few chapters today I am hoping there is a sequel to this book. I haven't looked it up yet because I'm just too excited about getting on here and expressing my satisfaction. So, if you're thinking about picking a copy of this. Do.
Although, this may not be one of the most literary pieces; I still find that analysis could take place on several channels. There is plenty to observe, learn and discuss in this book. The economics of the ship, the powers of the church, the mission of the Argonos, the agency of the characters, etc.
After reading the final few chapters today I am hoping there is a sequel to this book. I haven't looked it up yet because I'm just too excited about getting on here and expressing my satisfaction. So, if you're thinking about picking a copy of this. Do.
May 16, 2021
I did read the entire book, I’m sad to say.
It was well written. It was similar to being promised an exciting vacation, arriving at your local airport, boarding the plane and being moved up to first class. Feeling the anticipation as the plane takes off, having a smooth flight with endless peanuts. Then arriving at the same airport, disembarking, and going home.
The question you ask yourself is, “What was all that for?” It goes nowhere. Nothing is resolved. We are where we started (with the exception of losing 8 hours). You work all week, but there is no paycheck.
There is one scene near the end involving a major character that is so preposterous, so inexplicable, so nonsensical...and then completely glossed over, ignored and forgotten. I am beyond disappointed.
Waste...of...time. The fool on the ship was me.
It was well written. It was similar to being promised an exciting vacation, arriving at your local airport, boarding the plane and being moved up to first class. Feeling the anticipation as the plane takes off, having a smooth flight with endless peanuts. Then arriving at the same airport, disembarking, and going home.
The question you ask yourself is, “What was all that for?” It goes nowhere. Nothing is resolved. We are where we started (with the exception of losing 8 hours). You work all week, but there is no paycheck.
There is one scene near the end involving a major character that is so preposterous, so inexplicable, so nonsensical...and then completely glossed over, ignored and forgotten. I am beyond disappointed.
Waste...of...time. The fool on the ship was me.
August 17, 2010
This is a wretched book. I think I bought it because I love the other Richard Russo so much. Don't make the same mistake. This is science fiction at its worst, full of plot holes and dangling threads. An ill-defined alien threat, some religious symbolism, and random character development do not a story make.
August 17, 2023
Novelón. Buenos personajes, todos ellos. Buena historia llena de misterios, secretos y amenazas latentes. Muy recomendable.
(Sólo un pequeño fallo por algo muy obvio de lo que los personajes no se percatan hasta que es demasiado tarde, pensé que era un error del autor.)
(Sólo un pequeño fallo por algo muy obvio de lo que los personajes no se percatan hasta que es demasiado tarde, pensé que era un error del autor.)
October 30, 2019
Dysfunctional human space ark finds deserted alien spaceship which was a haunted house. This was a Spooky Spaceship story with emphasis on horror.
TL;DR Description
This was two good stories that were not made to work well with each other as parallel plot-lines. Russo is a good writer. The soft science fiction story of a tribalized, forever wandering generation ship would have been deep enough plot-wise to carry the novel alone. His alien ghost ship was likewise a good, but smaller story. Together, they never really got out of orbit. The existential threat of the alien honey pot too quickly wrapped-up the Flying Dutchman generational ark story. Too bad.
REVIEW
My dead tree copy was 370-pages with a US 2001 copyright. I read the first half of the book savoring each chapter. Reading slowed down with disappointment in the story's direction shortly after the mid-point.
Richard Paul Russo is an American, science fiction author. He has seven (7) published books. He was most active in the late ‘80’s and 90’s as a writer. I’ve read almost all of his books. I might be considered a minor fanboi. I'd been meaning to read this book for years. It was with great excitement that I turned-up this pristine paperback copy in a perfectly disheveled and delightful Canuckistani used book store.
Russo is a proficient writer. Word usage was well done. In addition, the book was well edited. The author is more of a character-writer. Dialog was better than descriptive prose. Action sequences were well-enough choreographed. Space and technical vocabulary was OK, although there was a lot of hand waving and dependence on well-known genre tropes. There was a single POV throughout.
There was only a small amount of: sex, drugs and no rock ‘n roll. There was sex, but it was handled in the fade to black manner. The sex involved the physically disabled protagonist. I thought an opportunity was missed in not going wider with it inside the ark story. There was substance abuse. Mostly, it was heavy consumption of alcohol, although there was mention of soft-core and future pharmaceutical abuse. I didn’t understand how they could distill Scotch in a spaceship, so far from Scotland? Music references were there to create background noise.
Violence was physical and firearms, although it was not graphic. Frankly, there was only a small amount of violence in the action scenes. That was handled rather antiseptically. There was however, somewhat graphic descriptions of the aftermath of torture. This included torture of children. These descriptions were in-line with the more mature of contemporary horror novels. Body count amongst humans was genocidal.
The protagonist was Bartolomeo Aguilera. He’s the congenitally, disabled factotum of the ark’s Captain. He was not a likable character at first, but he grew on me. I think Russo intended him to become Captain, but changed his mind to the detriment of the story. Bartolomeo’s love interest was Father Veronica. She was a devout, female priest with chronic depression. Their love was unconsummated and very pure. The clergy and the Captain were opposed to each other on the ark. Russo tossed aside a perfectly good Romeo and Juliet angle. Bartolomeo had a confederate named Pär. He was a dwarf member of the ark’s hoi polloi. Those were the good guys. It was such an unlikely combination of the halt, lame and metaphorically blind that I couldn’t help seeing an unlikely future in the story. The antagonists were Captain Nikos and Bishop Soldano. Nikos was a Machiavellian, functional alcoholic. Soldano was the leader of The Church. It has a theology where the ship will always wander the galaxy. This was despite after hundreds of years without a refit, it’s getting pretty rickety. Nikos and Soldano were also bitter rivals. There were aliens too. Only one was observed close-at-claw. The alien’s motivation was also completely opaque. Veronica and Soldano would have benefited with more development. Oddly, a young hoi polli teen, Francis received an untoward amount of development, and then wasn’t used. In general I thought subordinate character development was very uneven.
You can’t avoid the film of the same name when writing about this book: Ship of Fools (1965). In the film, a microcosm of early 1930s society travels to (early Nazi) Germany in an ocean liner.
In this story, the ark's self-contained population isolated from the larger galaxy suffers from class conflict and the political struggle between the various ruling elites and the hoi polli. Meanwhile the ark is falling apart after hundreds of years of use. The ark’s passengers and crew have lost the technology to make complete repairs. A theological component to the story on ‘Free Will’, existence of God, and the Nature of Evil is injected through the ark’s church elite. (I wasn’t interested in it.) The ark makes a long-due planet fall on a depopulated world. They find the original population mysteriously committed self-genocide in a brutally, horrific fashion. Bartolomeo changes political affiliation and tries to decamp to the empty planet with the hoi polloi. That doesn’t work. He ends-up imprisoned. He’s released when his services are needed to explore a huge, deserted alien space ship that was mysteriously encountered after the planet fall.
The story ends rather precipitously with Bartolomeo’s transformation being complete, but not to this reader. (He doesn't get the Father.)
World building was OK, if you don’t look too hard. This was not hard science fiction. Bartolomeo’s exoskeleton to correct for his physical deformities was a nice touch. The rest of the tech was credible in a Star Trek type of way, where you’re expected to be familiar with the tropes-in-play. For example, the ark has both antigravity and a warp drive. The ark and the alien ship are worldlets in size- how did they move? Where the author did his best with tech was to describe the rundown condition of the ark. He was real good at describing how things were not working. The derelict alien ship was one of the best of its kind—if you’re into alien-tech haunted houses.
This was an initially entertaining generation ship story. I was ready for class warfare on a sinking ship. Just as I was settling down to that, it became a space horror story. The existential threat of the derelict did not affect the original socio-dynamics of the ark in any way I would have predicted. Several very promising plot-lines either ended or were discarded too quickly. I had no interest in the too obvious theology exposed in the story. (I had a problem with aliens as a metaphor for implacable Evil.) A good ahead-of-its time-side story on folks with disabilities received short shrift. There was also only a half-baked love story between Father Veronica and Bartolomeo that I wanted to read more about. What was the motive of the aliens? (The reader never finds out.) I thought the author missed the opportunity to make a ‘better’ smaller space horror novel or a larger, better class warfare novel. Unfortunately, neither occurred. In summary, I liked parts of the book, but the whole was less than the sum of the parts.
Readers interested in haunted space ship stories may want to read: Salvation Day by Kali Wallace or Blindsight by Peter Watts.
TL;DR Description
This was two good stories that were not made to work well with each other as parallel plot-lines. Russo is a good writer. The soft science fiction story of a tribalized, forever wandering generation ship would have been deep enough plot-wise to carry the novel alone. His alien ghost ship was likewise a good, but smaller story. Together, they never really got out of orbit. The existential threat of the alien honey pot too quickly wrapped-up the Flying Dutchman generational ark story. Too bad.
REVIEW
My dead tree copy was 370-pages with a US 2001 copyright. I read the first half of the book savoring each chapter. Reading slowed down with disappointment in the story's direction shortly after the mid-point.
Richard Paul Russo is an American, science fiction author. He has seven (7) published books. He was most active in the late ‘80’s and 90’s as a writer. I’ve read almost all of his books. I might be considered a minor fanboi. I'd been meaning to read this book for years. It was with great excitement that I turned-up this pristine paperback copy in a perfectly disheveled and delightful Canuckistani used book store.
Russo is a proficient writer. Word usage was well done. In addition, the book was well edited. The author is more of a character-writer. Dialog was better than descriptive prose. Action sequences were well-enough choreographed. Space and technical vocabulary was OK, although there was a lot of hand waving and dependence on well-known genre tropes. There was a single POV throughout.
There was only a small amount of: sex, drugs and no rock ‘n roll. There was sex, but it was handled in the fade to black manner. The sex involved the physically disabled protagonist. I thought an opportunity was missed in not going wider with it inside the ark story. There was substance abuse. Mostly, it was heavy consumption of alcohol, although there was mention of soft-core and future pharmaceutical abuse. I didn’t understand how they could distill Scotch in a spaceship, so far from Scotland? Music references were there to create background noise.
Violence was physical and firearms, although it was not graphic. Frankly, there was only a small amount of violence in the action scenes. That was handled rather antiseptically. There was however, somewhat graphic descriptions of the aftermath of torture. This included torture of children. These descriptions were in-line with the more mature of contemporary horror novels. Body count amongst humans was genocidal.
The protagonist was Bartolomeo Aguilera. He’s the congenitally, disabled factotum of the ark’s Captain. He was not a likable character at first, but he grew on me. I think Russo intended him to become Captain, but changed his mind to the detriment of the story. Bartolomeo’s love interest was Father Veronica. She was a devout, female priest with chronic depression. Their love was unconsummated and very pure. The clergy and the Captain were opposed to each other on the ark. Russo tossed aside a perfectly good Romeo and Juliet angle. Bartolomeo had a confederate named Pär. He was a dwarf member of the ark’s hoi polloi. Those were the good guys. It was such an unlikely combination of the halt, lame and metaphorically blind that I couldn’t help seeing an unlikely future in the story. The antagonists were Captain Nikos and Bishop Soldano. Nikos was a Machiavellian, functional alcoholic. Soldano was the leader of The Church. It has a theology where the ship will always wander the galaxy. This was despite after hundreds of years without a refit, it’s getting pretty rickety. Nikos and Soldano were also bitter rivals. There were aliens too. Only one was observed close-at-claw. The alien’s motivation was also completely opaque. Veronica and Soldano would have benefited with more development. Oddly, a young hoi polli teen, Francis received an untoward amount of development, and then wasn’t used. In general I thought subordinate character development was very uneven.
You can’t avoid the film of the same name when writing about this book: Ship of Fools (1965). In the film, a microcosm of early 1930s society travels to (early Nazi) Germany in an ocean liner.
In this story, the ark's self-contained population isolated from the larger galaxy suffers from class conflict and the political struggle between the various ruling elites and the hoi polli. Meanwhile the ark is falling apart after hundreds of years of use. The ark’s passengers and crew have lost the technology to make complete repairs. A theological component to the story on ‘Free Will’, existence of God, and the Nature of Evil is injected through the ark’s church elite. (I wasn’t interested in it.) The ark makes a long-due planet fall on a depopulated world. They find the original population mysteriously committed self-genocide in a brutally, horrific fashion. Bartolomeo changes political affiliation and tries to decamp to the empty planet with the hoi polloi. That doesn’t work. He ends-up imprisoned. He’s released when his services are needed to explore a huge, deserted alien space ship that was mysteriously encountered after the planet fall.
The story ends rather precipitously with Bartolomeo’s transformation being complete, but not to this reader. (He doesn't get the Father.)
World building was OK, if you don’t look too hard. This was not hard science fiction. Bartolomeo’s exoskeleton to correct for his physical deformities was a nice touch. The rest of the tech was credible in a Star Trek type of way, where you’re expected to be familiar with the tropes-in-play. For example, the ark has both antigravity and a warp drive. The ark and the alien ship are worldlets in size- how did they move? Where the author did his best with tech was to describe the rundown condition of the ark. He was real good at describing how things were not working. The derelict alien ship was one of the best of its kind—if you’re into alien-tech haunted houses.
This was an initially entertaining generation ship story. I was ready for class warfare on a sinking ship. Just as I was settling down to that, it became a space horror story. The existential threat of the derelict did not affect the original socio-dynamics of the ark in any way I would have predicted. Several very promising plot-lines either ended or were discarded too quickly. I had no interest in the too obvious theology exposed in the story. (I had a problem with aliens as a metaphor for implacable Evil.) A good ahead-of-its time-side story on folks with disabilities received short shrift. There was also only a half-baked love story between Father Veronica and Bartolomeo that I wanted to read more about. What was the motive of the aliens? (The reader never finds out.) I thought the author missed the opportunity to make a ‘better’ smaller space horror novel or a larger, better class warfare novel. Unfortunately, neither occurred. In summary, I liked parts of the book, but the whole was less than the sum of the parts.
Readers interested in haunted space ship stories may want to read: Salvation Day by Kali Wallace or Blindsight by Peter Watts.
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