Colony Fleet

by Susan R. Matthews

With dreams of establishing a utopian colony of Earth refugees on a distant planet threatened by class hatred and factional strife, only outsider Hillbrane Harkover, a one-time member of the elite class, who has been betrayed, condemned, and exiled to the fringe of the fleet, holds the key to rescuing the colony from certain catastrophe. Original.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

304 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

About the author

After earning an undergraduate degree in psychology, Susan R. Matthews was commisioned into the United States Army, where she was the operations and security officer for a combat support hospital specializing in nuclear, biological, and radiological warfare. Currently working as an auditor for an aerospace manufacturer, Susan lives with her partner in Seattle, Washington.

Reviews

[Jason Bleckly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book knowing nothing about it or the author. I’m consider myself reasonably well read and knowledgeable in SF, but I’d never heard of her. What I don’t understand is why I haven’t heard of her. This book is brilliant it should have won some sort of award. I can only guess that ineffectual marketing from the publisher and a small amount of output (10 novels in 27 years) meant she never really got noticed by the reading gestalt. Hopefully this will help address the problem. This is her 5th novel and was published in 2000. It is a standalone novel making it a really good place to start on her oeuvre.

What is Colony Fleet about? Exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a generational interstellar colonisation story. But where it differs significantly from the majority of this sub-genre is it isn’t a single ship and it’s not going to a single destination. There is a half dozen hollowed out asteroids set up as different ecological habitats (tropical, desert, temperate, etc) with a fleet support vessels making up the colonisation effort. Hence the title. The flight plan is also not to a single destination, but a course pass 5 habitable planets. At each planet along the flight plan a portion of the fleet will stop to form a colony while the rest continues to the next destination. Only the portion stopping will even slow down, the rest will continue without wasting energy to decelerate and then re-accelerate.

As a mission plan this is extremely well thought out. It’s not putting all the eggs in one basket for a single throw of the dice (I love a mixed metaphor). Multiple vessels mean multiple redundancy for the journey, and landing colonies on multiple planets increases the chances of at least one colony being successful and not dying out. This is a so much better plan than a single large ship going to a single destination, which in the normal plan in the Generation Ship sub-genre.

Now all of this may seem like a huge spoiler, but it’s not. This is all outlined in the prologue titled ‘Launch’ which sees the fleet set out from Plutonian orbit where it was assembled. But I found this such a new and interesting take on generation ship story that I felt it needed explaining in detail. Chapter 1 and the real story begins 400 years later when the fleet is approaching Waystation One, the first colonisation planet.

400 years later the fleet society has changed somewhat, as societies have the habit of doing. It’s become stratified and caste bound into 3 layers; Jneer (Engineers, the nobility), Oway (Administrators, the bourgeoisie), Mech (Technicians/Mechanics, the serfs aka people who do the actual work instead of poncing about (you can tell where my loyalties lie)). It’s a positively feudal society. In theory a person can move up castes, but in practice each layer protects their own what they have from the plebs below.

And this is where the story starts with 2 privileged Jneers; Hillbrane, who has a casual arrogance that is justified because of her exceptional abilites and Raleigh who has a forced arrogance because he has more ego than ability. They are the same yet completely different. The story starts with them in a competition against each other the outcome of which sends them on widely divergent paths while in the fleet preparing for the landing on Waystation One (the colony world). They are reunited in the first landing party on the colony, and their different paths since the initial competition guides events on the planet. I can’t say more than that without major spoilers.

This is a brilliantly realised character driven story looking at social stratification exaggerated to the extreme to make it’s point. All of the characters are detailed and believable even though they are almost archetypal. As I was reading I kept thinking, yep I know that person, yep I work with that person. Both the good and the bad.

The society is seen and analysed through the eyes of these two main characters. The book almost qualifies as satire given current trends towards tribalism. It’s a highly relevant appreciation as well as being an excellent and engaging story.

But it’s not just a character story. It’s also semi-hard SF, by which I mean there is technical details about space travel and shields to protect ships traveling at high velocity. And growing food. And life support process. And resource management and allocation. All of the necessary nuts and bolts needed for a generations long space ship and the problems of establishing a colony on a new world. Without actually googling to check facts I found all the technicalities believable and well considered. At the same time though there were some technical issues that were glossed over for the sack of the story, such as gravity control. This is why I classify it as semi-hard SF. The science is mostly hard with a few spongy bits, but it’s better than a lot of SF.

This is the best book I’ve read this year and it’s been up against some stiff competition from the likes of Kate Wilhelm and Sherri Tepper. I thought Michael Mammay’s ‘Generation Ship’ was brilliant, this is better in every respect.

[Paulina Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

So the beginning of this book sucked, but the end somewhat made up for it. I did struggle to take seriously a story with a major population group named “the Jneers” but whatever.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went into this book with no expectations, a used book store chance purchase, from an authour I've never read. It was a pleasant surprise.

The concept is the well trodden generational colony ship fleet. Without ruining anything, things devolve over the years.

I kept expecting the story that develops, to explode into frantic action and meyhem, and it never does. It's so nice when it's not the absolute worst thing that can happen, that drives the novel forward.

For the most part people are people, not dazzling heros and horribly evil figureheads.

The characters are believable and relatable, the backdrop interesting, and the outcome likeable.

Sounds like damning with faint praise perhaps, but I did enjoy it. It was nice.

[D.G. Post · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. Admittedly, I probably gave the fourth star purely for the fact that I love love love stories with spaceships in them and that are about the colonization of far off, alien worlds. I also have have a thing for stories about generation ships, and how a crew's purpose can evolve over the centuries until it is almost unrecognizable from the original intent of those who launched the voyage.

[Skylar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn’t the best book of Matthews I’ve read, but it was still enjoyable despite having a contrived plot, and the love story was thankfully not saccharine despite being core to the story. If I had a nickel for every sci-fi story that hinged on a critical device with no backup, though...

[Rebecca Huston · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an ok science fiction novel, but not a great one. While the action and adventure part is interesting, as well as the basics of colonizing a new world, the book has some serious problems with the simplistic characters, and the plot is very forgettable. That's a pity, as the author can write good sf when she puts her mind to it.

For the longer review, please go here:
http://www.epinions.com/content_16668...

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read. A fleet of generation ships, where the descendents of the original engineers, administrators, and technicians have devolved over centuries into a rigid caste/class system, The heroine, of the engineer caste, starts out arrogant and naive but learns a lot when she is outcast and forced to live among the lower castes.

[Christian J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on a tried-and-true format. Class struggles featured in a big way!

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, but disappointing in comparison to the brilliant Jurisdiction novels.