Survey Ship

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Ace Books, 1981. First mass market paperback printing. Cover art by Paul Alexander, several interior illustrations by Fabian. Six young people, very different from one another, are selected for a long journey to find an earthlike planet.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy, American, German Literature

231 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1980

About the author

Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy novels such as The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series, often with a feminist outlook.

Bradley's first published novel-length work was Falcons of Narabedla, first published in the May 1957 issue of Other Worlds. When she was a child, Bradley stated that she enjoyed reading adventure fantasy authors such as Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton, and Leigh Brackett, especially when they wrote about "the glint of strange suns on worlds that never were and never would be." Her first novel and much of her subsequent work show their influence strongly.

Early in her career, writing as Morgan Ives, Miriam Gardner, John Dexter, and Lee Chapman, Marion Zimmer Bradley produced several works outside the speculative fiction genre, including some gay and lesbian pulp fiction novels. For example, I Am a Lesbian was published in 1962. Though relatively tame by today's standards, they were considered pornographic when published, and for a long time she refused to disclose the titles she wrote under these pseudonyms.

Her 1958 story The Planet Savers introduced the planet of Darkover, which became the setting of a popular series by Bradley and other authors. The Darkover milieu may be considered as either fantasy with science fiction overtones or as science fiction with fantasy overtones, as Darkover is a lost earth colony where psi powers developed to an unusual degree. Bradley wrote many Darkover novels by herself, but in her later years collaborated with other authors for publication; her literary collaborators have continued the series since her death.

Bradley took an active role in science-fiction and fantasy fandom, promoting interaction with professional authors and publishers and making several important contributions to the subculture.

For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies, continuing to encourage submissions from unpublished authors, but this ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to some of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished, and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction.

Bradley was also the editor of the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series, which encouraged submissions of fantasy stories featuring original and non-traditional heroines from young and upcoming authors. Although she particularly encouraged young female authors, she was not averse to including male authors in her anthologies. Mercedes Lackey was just one of many authors who first appeared in the anthologies. She also maintained a large family of writers at her home in Berkeley. Ms Bradley was editing the final Sword and Sorceress manuscript up until the week of her death in September of 1999.

Probably her most famous single novel is The Mists of Avalon. A retelling of the Camelot legend from the point of view of Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar, it grew into a series of books; like the Darkover series, the later novels are written with or by other authors and have continued to appear after Bradley's death.

Her reputation has been posthumously marred by multiple accusations of child sexual abuse by her daughter Moira Greyland, and for allegedly assisting her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in sexually abusing multiple unrelated children.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Douglas Beagley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and simple "colony ship isolation" sci-fi, I read it when I was fifteen and loved the frank sexuality and day-dream inspiring sci-fi. I read it again a year or two ago, curious, and it still holds up quite nicely, for what it is.

It explores the stresses between smart humans. Smart folk think that if everyone were just smart, we wouldn't have any more problems. Hah! I think the book is very appealing to all nerds, or anyone who remembers being smart-outcast.

The book has a bunch of black and white, bodice-ripper type 70s artwork in it which is part hilarious and part poetic and delightful. Bizarre.

[Amanda Adams · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the writing itself is high quality and I enjoyed the character development, this book has A LOT of sexual content that I wasn't expecting, as well as a pro-homosexual view. The book obviously takes a secular view of sex and presents it not as a special union meant for marriage but as a gift that a person can share amongst many people (ex. The characters expect they will need to share partners during their extended stay in space and claim to be ok with this.) Sex and intimacy lose their true purpose, and the characters are unrealistic, as they are portrayed as having somehow transcended jealousy that would easily arise with sharing partners. As for the plot, I was disappointed that there wasn't a twist at the end. There's no explanation really given about all the weird computer failures, nothing insidious behind them. So the story is essentially just about young adults with lots of training and little experience thrown into space dealing with bizarre computer failures that they can't figure out, leading readers to believe there will be some revelation or explanation given, but ending disappointed.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

I Forced Myself to Finish this book... and I did....nails-chalkboard.... however.... the last 50 to 75 pages is when the action of this book starts becoming a little interesting and that's where the reader wishes there was more. The rest of the book is pure drama from 6 young adults perspectives.

Majority of the time its gives multiple poor attempts to the reader of explainging what the author's different ideas of Political differences, of Ones Sexuality and of Religious topics and seems like it's thrown in the readers face "Unintentionally". For 1980 this seem like the author was going for shock instead of substance. There was little world building and even less when on the ship, it was mostly about the coping with isolation which is the majority of the filled drama in the book.

I've seen a few other comments about how the book's ending falls of a cliff with no conclusion but I think that was the one thing the book had done correctly as leaving it as a cliffhanger.



1⭐️ DNF or Forced myself to Finish
2⭐️ It's Just a book
3⭐️ A Good Book
4⭐️ On My Reread List
5⭐️ god mode

[Jason R. Gross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically a love story with six young adults in space looking for a new planet having a lot of sex along the way and basically leaving us with a cliffhanger at the end. Do they survive or do they perish in the very vastness of space. You decide.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really 3 1/2 stars. The book was a good read, entertaining, but not very long. At the end I was left wondering if there was a sequel planned.

[Lirio Dendron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing special. MZB did better.

[Cynthia · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, hmmmm....very very late 70's early 80's sci fi. Glad to have read her( the author) finally. I think I understand why I have never gotten very far in her books.

[Elephantom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the story as far as it went, but I felt that it wasn't finished. Too many unresolved mysteries.

[M. Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such beautifully written prose; highly recommended.

[Elen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gostei no geral, mas é um pouco problemático. E o fim me deixou um pouco com gosto de quero mais.

[Thistle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading books on the Kindle, cover images are in black and white, and smaller than LJ icons. Sure once you open the book you could see the whole cover as big as your screen, but by default the book starts you on page one of the story, not on the cover. Usually I try to go back to the cover and start from there, but sometimes I don't.

This time I hadn't. I should have.

I loved the prologue so much. The story went somewhat downhill from there, but I was still generally enjoying it. So, when I had a chance, I googled to see who wrote it and if s/he had written anything else. I was unhappily shocked.

In case you hadn't encountered the news yet, Bradley sexually abused children, including her own daughter. Her daughter wrote:

"The first time she molested me, I was three. The last time, I was 12, and able to walk away … She was cruel and violent, as well as completely out of her mind sexually. I am not her only victim, nor were her only victims girls."

If that's not bad enough, "Most notably, she actively aided and abetted her husband, Walter Breen, in the sexual abuse and molestation of children.".

So, yeah. I had to decide what I was going to do about reading this book. Since I already owned it, and had mostly enjoyed it thus far, I decided to keep going with it.

That turned out to be a mistake. This story was about three things, in this order:

Teenagers thinking. (70%)
Teenagers having sex. (25%)
Teenagers in space. (5%)

All I could think about is how she might have used her abuse of children as some sort of research (purposefully or not) for all the sex in this book. It turned my stomach.

I did try to judge the book based on the story alone (thus 'disliked' instead of 'hated', since I liked the prologue so much and I did finish the whole thing). But even without the foul background of the author, the story was just pretty darned boring. Six basically perfect teenagers who spent most of the space trip thinking or having sex. So. Much. Thinking. Often thinking about sex. Page after page after page of nothing but them thinking.

Every problem was solved in, at most, a couple pages. Most of them the next page.

The author had a love affair with exclamation points. The characters! Were constantly! Talking! Like this!

The copy I had was a scan of the physical book (thankfully apparently I didn't buy it), so it was full of errors (like 1 or l in the place of an I), but there was one amusing one. One character screamed:

"They left us out here to live or Jive!"

Teenage jive contests in space. I'd read a book about that, unless it were written by this author.

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story:
In the future the united space program selects talented young children to become future space explorers. These children go through years of training and in their 18th year, 4-10 of the children in the class (the best of the best)are chosen to crew a survey ship that goes out among the stars to find habitable planets. This is story of Survey Ship 103. This crew of 6 must survive themselves, the dangers of space travel, and a faulty star ship in order to complete their mission and help humanity spread to the stars.
----
Well the first thing I'll say about this book is that it is missing some of the pieces or it was meant to be part of a series. It is well written but most of what happens in the book seems to set the stage for a climax later.... that never happens. This story seems to be more of a "situational" story about what would happen if you took a bunch of super educated 18 yr olds, who have been sheltered from the world since they were selected at a very young age (usually 5 or 6), and turned them lose in a space ship and said find me a planet or don't bother coming back. The majority of the book deals with the crew "growing up" as they try to deal with not having any supervison for the first time in their lives. That is the part that makes the book interesting. If your looking for a space disater novel this is not it (try Voyage of the Star Wolf, Midshipmans hope, or The Helmsman Novels), if on the other hand your looking for a situationl novel that deals with people trying to understand themselves in a new world this novel might work for you.
m.a.c

[Maddalenah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I used to love this book when I was younger, and I guess I can still see why; reading it now, though, it's a really short novel about relationships in space.
And when you realize that everything happens in a span of... 3? 4? days, it gets a bit ridicolous.
There's also a repetitiveness of themes and actual dialogue, and everything is analyzed and explained, and then analyzed and explained again, and people get over lifetime issues during a conversation, which is ridicolous in itself.
Still, I think if this was marketed as an YA book it could work.

[Sarah Sayre · Rating 1 out of 5]

Skimming over the fact that the plot of this story is almost pointless, there was way to much emphasis on the atheistic view of the characters. The first half of the book was basically about a 17 y.o whining about the fact that he couldn't be with his gay lover and the other half of the book was about who was going to sleep with whom among the ships crew. Oh and everyone runs around naked.. my copy was illustrated. I got this book for $1.25 which is why I picked it up in the first place; however, I was not expecting to read a story that read like a whiny young adult novel with sex added in.

[João Sousa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't get the point here, everything seemed to me too much out of sync. At first I thought it was just the environment or the style that I was not fond of, but then I read a little about the author's life and everything became clear.

I think that Marion Z. B. was simply projecting here her troubled views on life, sexuality and gender under the concept of "fiction novel". And although I did like her writing style in some moments, I can not say that this is a book that left a strong impression in me.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

How do you knit a team into a team? These six space explorers have been in school together since they were five years old... how do they discard their old rivalries and form a working unit? Some time, some skill and the clever plot device of a team mate in peril. Worth the two hours I spent reading it.

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grade C

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications) · Rating 4 out of 5]

And oldie, and by my memory of it, probably pretty old fashioned by now. But I remember loving this when i was a teen!

[Leona · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story ended with no real resolution to the plot line. Which drives me crazy, grrrr.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much soap opera, too little action. And what gives with ni ground support at all for the launch of an interstellar exploratory flight?