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71st out of 118 books
—
256 voters
Non-Stop
Here is an adventure story complete with such traditional ingredients as a lost tribe, sinister traces of a mighty former civilisation, and a hero, Roy Complain, who, purged by peril, comes eventually to find himself. But these classic ingredients have undergone a romantic metamorphosis: no tribe has ever been more thoroughly lost than the Greene tribe, and when Roy Compla...more
Paperback, 256 pages
Published
September 14th 2004
by Gollancz
(first published 1958)
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A mad literary experiment gone horribly right, the details of which can't be adumbrated much since the novel contains so many revelations as to be eminently spoilable, Non-Stop parachutes the reader into the heart of ignorance and darkness. The only hero among his jungle tribe, a welter of superstitious folk knowledge and unaccountable futuristic technology, is a hunter by trade and a questioner by disposition who senses the paradox of his environment and yearns for a greater purpose. His ventur...more
I just read this on the beach on Fire Island. I'm a big fan of Brian Aldiss, though I admit he's a spotty writer. The premise--of a generation ship whose crew has forgotten that they are on a starship--is terrific, and it's wonderfully thought-through and very well plotted. This book is also distinguished by having a strong, three-dimensional female character, which is unusual for the science fiction of the late 1950s. On the negative side, some of the writing is clumsy and the ending is a bit a...more
3 likes · like · see review
The concept of the generation ship (a slower-than-light colonization vessel that takes many generations to complete its journey) is a well-known trope in science fiction. Robert Heinlein did a version of this idea in Orphans of the Sky in 1941. Just because the idea of the generation ship has been done before doesn't mean a great tale can't be woven from it.
In Non-Stop, Aldiss creates a rich and fascinating society of hunter-gatherers who live in "Quarters" but who are ignorant of their place...more
In Non-Stop, Aldiss creates a rich and fascinating society of hunter-gatherers who live in "Quarters" but who are ignorant of their place...more
Oct 05, 2009
Jesse
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
sci-fi,
100-must-read-sci-fi-novels
A small note. This is not "Technically" one of the 100 must read sci-fi novels as formulated in the Bloomsbury goodreading guide of that name. I had technical and financial difficulties in obtaining the book said list selected for Brian Aldiss ("Hothouse") and instead looked into the "Read On" choices of further titles of note by this author. This was the first one listed, was obtainable, and was infact his first book, so I read it just to get the ball rolling on this project. Ok, now on to the...more
4 likes · like · see review
Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss turned out to be a very easy and quick read. This is good SF without too many complications. Many of the ideas may not have been brand new, but not all SF has to necessarily be new to be great. The main antagonist 'Complain' ventures, along with a motley crew of characters, from his own tribal units, out into the unknown universe. Led by a somewhat crazy priest, they hope to find the truth about their universe and ultimately take control of their destinys.
The fact tha...more
The fact tha...more
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Non-Stop is the second book I've read by Brian Aldiss. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did the first book of his I read, which was his dying earth novel Hothouse. At times I found it to be a bit hard-going. I found it difficult to get a picture in my head of the scenes described. I also didn't find the setting of the book too interesting, initially.
Despite all these things, I read on and found that the story became more engaging as I did. Aldiss is excellent at characterization. Characters...more
Despite all these things, I read on and found that the story became more engaging as I did. Aldiss is excellent at characterization. Characters...more
Oct 30, 2012
David Mcangus
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
science-fiction,
science-fiction-masterworks
The opening couple of chapters of this book were really promising. They create a world that's genuinely intriguing with a mysterious history that the reader can't wait to unravel. Unfortunately, about half way in, a plot development condenses the world and throws the feeling of adventure straight out the airlock.
Around this point some of the characterisations also began to bug me, in particular that of the female lead. Earlier in the novel, we see women depicted as second class citizens who are...more
Around this point some of the characterisations also began to bug me, in particular that of the female lead. Earlier in the novel, we see women depicted as second class citizens who are...more
This isn't a book. It's an Ur-book, a book that comes before the books that you know. The thing which creates a pattern.
Actually, I don't know that that's really the case, but that's what it feels like, as with all the Brian Aldiss books that I've read: he creates not just worlds, but patterns for worlds. Here, the interstellar generation ship that nobody really knows is a generation ship.
In the end, the whole plot is an excuse to explore the setting--and the ways it can change. But the writin...more
Actually, I don't know that that's really the case, but that's what it feels like, as with all the Brian Aldiss books that I've read: he creates not just worlds, but patterns for worlds. Here, the interstellar generation ship that nobody really knows is a generation ship.
In the end, the whole plot is an excuse to explore the setting--and the ways it can change. But the writin...more
Brian Aldiss’ classic first novel, Non-Stop, simply put, is a four star plot wrapped around a two star prose. The story revolves around a multi-generational spaceship on colonizing mission whose society has completely broken down due to some mysterious tragedy. Instead of being technologically advanced, the people aboard the spaceship have digressed into hunting/gathering tribes, each deck of the spaceship having its own individual primitive sect. Of course, an outcast group decides to explore i...more
Aug 23, 2010
Charles Dee Mitchell
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
mid-century-sf
With his first novel, Aldiss created a society that has evolved after 23 generations lost in space on an enormous ship bound home from a colonizing mission centuries before. The Greene Tribe are little more than savages, following The Teachings that mostly promote self-interest and superstitious fear. The Greenes, who live in the Quarters, a jungle infested with rampant hydroponic plants and waves of midges, know vaguely of The Forwards, another, more advanced society, But there are also the Gia...more
I love reading these Masterworks books and this was a story I had never heard of. It was great. Roy lives within a tribe, scratching a rough existence in a constantly moving world full off the continuously growing ponics. But life is stifling and his dissatisfaction is shared by more that one member of his tribe. With the threat of battle with another tribe, he joins forces with a few colleagues and a renegade priest to discover more about his world and whether the rumours are true - that they a...more
I can't believe I've never come across this book before, it dates from 1958 so it's been around as long as I've been reading sci fi! Unlike so many sci fi novels from the 50s, it doesn't feel dated either. You don't get the feeling that real science has overtaken the fiction. It's the story of what might happen if something goes wrong on a multigenerational space trip, told from the point of view of descendents of the original crew, for whom the journey has become a myth, a few lines in their re...more
'Non-Stop' is considered as a classic of Science Fiction. I'm always a little cautious when I hear this categorization, because many classics just invented an idea in technical sense but failed to give life to the story itself. Fortunately, the novel of Brian Aldiss succeeds in discussing an interesting technical idea (a starship of colonists traveling through space for generations) AND portraying very well the social implications and possible surprises such a long journey might produce. Additio...more
The only reason I picked this book up is because it's one of the SF Masterworks series. I'm so glad I read it and reinforces how masterful the books in this series are.
Roy Complain is a hunter in Quarters. He takes his woman on a hunting trip, where they get set on by a gang and he loses her. This puts him on a pursuit course that came to be echoed in The Trueman Show with Jim Carrey -- that is, Complain learns that the world he's lived in is not reality.
Everything about this novel worked for me...more
Roy Complain is a hunter in Quarters. He takes his woman on a hunting trip, where they get set on by a gang and he loses her. This puts him on a pursuit course that came to be echoed in The Trueman Show with Jim Carrey -- that is, Complain learns that the world he's lived in is not reality.
Everything about this novel worked for me...more
I really liked this book. I had my doubts as I really haven't read to much sci-fi before but was really surprised. It basically kept me hooked from the first few pages. I found the fact that they were on a ship that was overgrown with pionics interesting. There are so many questions to be answered and it just keeps getting more interesting as you go on.
The only peeve that I have about it is that,in my opinion, it really ended really abruptly. I can't say that I loved any of the characters all t...more
The only peeve that I have about it is that,in my opinion, it really ended really abruptly. I can't say that I loved any of the characters all t...more
Not really my cup of tea.
Sometimes there are books you are just incompatible with. Books in which author's imagination didn't meet yours. In which reading is tough and the words are too dense to chew through. This was actually my third try to read and finish this book and it was a fight again. Many times I found myself lost in scenes which my brain was even struggling to conceive.
And I really don't like the books, where the WHOLE PICTURE is revealed piece by piece and you MUST pick up the breadc...more
Sometimes there are books you are just incompatible with. Books in which author's imagination didn't meet yours. In which reading is tough and the words are too dense to chew through. This was actually my third try to read and finish this book and it was a fight again. Many times I found myself lost in scenes which my brain was even struggling to conceive.
And I really don't like the books, where the WHOLE PICTURE is revealed piece by piece and you MUST pick up the breadc...more
Published in 1958, Non-Stop was Aldiss' first novel and focused on how the descendents of long ago space explorers fare on a generation ship.
As Non-Stop opens, things have not gone well at all, evidenced by the primitive living conditions of the ship's survivors. Hunter Roy Complain, like so many of his generation, feels there is something missing in his life. The adventure he embarks on beyond the perimeter of his tribe's living quarters brings a series of revelations that (for him and us) slow...more
As Non-Stop opens, things have not gone well at all, evidenced by the primitive living conditions of the ship's survivors. Hunter Roy Complain, like so many of his generation, feels there is something missing in his life. The adventure he embarks on beyond the perimeter of his tribe's living quarters brings a series of revelations that (for him and us) slow...more
This is one of those books that's loaded with possible spoilers, but most of the other reviews already gave the game away. The American copy was given the asinine title Starship, revealing what the reader knows well before the characters do: they’re the descendents of passengers on a generation ship which suffered some horrible accident, and which is now flying unchecked through space. With that in mind, some of the novel’s weirder parts fall into place, such as the group of feral humans trekkin...more
Roy Complain escapes from the village that is his home with a renagade priest to discover the mystery of their world: the ship. This is a story of a generation ship gone horribly wrong. The story plays out slowly, too slowly, I felt. I got slightly frustrated at the slow pace of the early parts of the book, with things only really coming together enough to make sense in the last quarter or so. And the strange combination of a primitive society living in the remnants of a technological marvel nev...more
De temps en temps, lire des classiques, ça soigne.
Ce roman en fait à mon avis partie, puisqu'assez ancien, traitant d'un sujet plus qu'intéressant, et ma foi fort bien écrit. Il a été chaudement conseillé par sf.marseille, et à bon escient.
Dans ce roman, on suit les aventures d'un chasseur dans une espèce de jungle assez improbable, qui va au fur et à mesure révéler toute son étrangeté et sa dimension assez terrifiante, avec une fin ouverte comme la sf dite, justement, classique, en a le secret....more
Ce roman en fait à mon avis partie, puisqu'assez ancien, traitant d'un sujet plus qu'intéressant, et ma foi fort bien écrit. Il a été chaudement conseillé par sf.marseille, et à bon escient.
Dans ce roman, on suit les aventures d'un chasseur dans une espèce de jungle assez improbable, qui va au fur et à mesure révéler toute son étrangeté et sa dimension assez terrifiante, avec une fin ouverte comme la sf dite, justement, classique, en a le secret....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2034738.html[return][return]It must be around thirty years since I first (and last) read Non-Stop. There are still lots of things to like about it. It was a deliberate response to the Heinlein stories later published as Orphans of the Sky, taking the concept of people living on a generation starship, but who do not realise their real situation, to a new level. Where Heinlein's protagonists were barely aware that they were on a spaceship at all, Aldiss's know that th...more
Thoroughly enjoyed this novel by Brain Aldiss. Hard to say much without giving the plot away, but the story itself was enjoyable as was the 'game' of spotting what was going on through the clues scattered around the book. Some interesting ideas explored here about the relationship between science and faith and what it means to be human. I've read a number of the SF Masterworks series yet (a collection of 'classic' science fiction works) and so far not a dud amongst them.
Pandorum meets The Carpet People. I liked this - while you can have a sweeping sci story with just a single base concept, Starship combines multiple ideas - the generation starship, contagion, mutation, containment, discovery and self-awareness... not to mention evolving rats, the parallel intelligent species.
The only grouse I have is while it's an awesome journey of discovery, the discovery doesn't translate into action; the end is just everything coming together by accident - actually, not ev...more
The only grouse I have is while it's an awesome journey of discovery, the discovery doesn't translate into action; the end is just everything coming together by accident - actually, not ev...more
A solidly entertaining hard sci-fi novel and one of the forerunners of the modern sci-fi movement. I don;t really want to go too much into the plot, as I feel the journey of the main character is the most important part of the story. All I'll say is, while you may have read this kind of story before, this is not only one of the earliest renditions, but one of the best. If you're interested in classic sci-fi, give this one a chance.
Cracking story - Aldiss's first novel. Multi-generation inter-steller ship, and something's gone very wrong. The struggling tribes in the deadways talk of the legend of a 'ship' and a 'journey' but have no clear knowledge of what it might be.... Off goes Green tribesman Complain to the distant lands of the Forwards and pieces together the truth of their real plight.
This book started slowly with an ultimately unlikable protagonist which made it hardish to get into at the beginning. It improves, as the protagonist evolves and we learn more about the character's world, into a fairly enjoyable book. Whatever happened to Complain's wife however? Also, the storyline with the rats really doesn't go anywhere.
I was surprised at how contemporary this 1958 novel felt. It's difficult to review without giving away the ending; I'll just say that Aldiss did a masterful job of world building, combining plausible hard SF elements with intriguing societies and complex characters (female as well as male). This is a top-flight SF read.
I'm conflicted. Aldiss writes clear prose and presents a valid and compelling message, but he does so within the structure of the sci-fi mystery novel. A little mystery can be a wonderful tool, but when the plot revolves around the search for an answer to a single, enormous question it can leave one feeling a little underwhelmed. The big reveal rarely satisfies the build up of interest over a multitude of pages.
Good page-turner SciFi from the 1950s, focusing on the over-worked topic of multi-generational space travel but taking it somewhere. A lot of fun, but it could have been better, I think, if it was fleshed out a bit more;things happen too easily and too quickly. Still a nice read. Greta for Aldiss fans.
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Pseudonyms: Jael Cracken, Peter Pica, John Runciman, C. C. Shackleton, Arch Mendicant, "Doc" Peristyle.
Brian Wilson Aldiss is one of the most important voices in science fiction writing today. He wrote his first novel while working as a bookseller in Oxford. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first work of science fiction and soon gained international recognition. Adored for his innovative literary t...more
More about Brian W. Aldiss...
Brian Wilson Aldiss is one of the most important voices in science fiction writing today. He wrote his first novel while working as a bookseller in Oxford. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first work of science fiction and soon gained international recognition. Adored for his innovative literary t...more
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