6 Mysteries Set on Generation Ships

There’s been a few recent mysteries that take place aboard generation ships, and I love to spot a trend, so I figured I’d assemble them all for you here. If you think about it, a generation ship is the ultimate setting for locked-room mysteries and slow-burn thrillers: you can’t leave, you can’t turn around, nothing works like it used to, social hierarchies are calcifying into caste, and bitter disputes last decades. Doubts in the mission—or any possibility of achieving it—increase commensurate to the growing distance from the home planet, and any mistakes made by those in charge, or crimes committed by those in their orbit, are bound to be covered up in the name of unity. Truly, a fertile ground for crime fiction. For as long as the environmental systems are functioning.

Emma Hine, Flotilla
(Hogarth)

In Flotilla, 17 ships remain of a generations-long search for a habitable planet, each holding upwards of a million residents, distrustful of outsiders and tired of their mission after hundreds of years in space. Three of the original vessels are gone from the fleet; two from catastrophic engineering failures, and another that simply…vanished. Hine’s heroine (appropriately named Carina, after a constellation) works as a watcher, scanning for dangers that aging sensors may have missed. She spends the long hours of her shift hoping to catch a glimpse of the missing ship and solve the mystery of its disappearance, while lusting for her coworker and covering up secrets of her own. She also occasionally zooms in on people dancing with themselves or arguing, à la Rear Window. Or perhaps, Rear Porthole? Anyway, you’ll have to wait till next July to dig into this excellent debut, but I’d advise getting on the library waitlist now.

Adam Oyebanji, Braking Day
(DAW)

Braking Day takes place on a generation ship whose colonists have rejected the home world’s dependence on AI in favor of neural augments and other bioware. At the novel’s start, an apprentice engineer begins to see visions of a floating girl screaming for help, and enlists his hacker cousin (the whole family has ties to the ship’s thriving underworld economy) to figure out if he’s hallucinating. Instead of a sign of oxygen deprivation of space-induced cabin sickness, she’s real: and they are not ready for the wild truths behind her sudden appearance.

Adam Oyebanji, Line of Descent
(DAW)

This one takes place in the same world as Braking Day and functions well as a prequel. Line of Descent asks, what could motivate someone to go so far as to kill amidst the high stakes of disrupting order on a colony ship? Readers might end up surprised, but they will certainly feel satisfied.

Mahmud El Sayed, The Republic of Memory
(Saga)

It is a universal truth that any functionary on a spaceship ship sufficiently well-placed will be susceptible to bribery, especially in a ship indulgently outfitted and gloriously inspired by the Ottoman Empire. In The Republic of Memory, gleefully corrupt officials, clever bootleggers, piratical smugglers, and nascent revolutionaries populate a generation ship (the second on this list) just over halfway to its destination, and beginning to crack at the seams. When a seemingly preventable disaster sends the ship’s factions into disarray, a former fighter gets assigned to investigate the accident as sabotage, recruiting plenty of unlikely allies on the way to the even more unlikely truth.

Peter F. Hamilton, A Hole in the Sky
(Angry Robot)

This one’s experiencing the worst problem to possibly have in space (and one reminiscent of Spaceballs): the ship’s precious atmosphere is slowly but surely leaking away, at a rate that will guarantee suffocation long before the adventurous voyagers reach their planned destination. Can the ship’s ingenious crew fix their home among the stars? Will the answer to their conundrum be found with the rebellious elders of their community, those who refuse to commit suicide at the age of 65? While some on this list warn against seeking longevity, this novel does the opposite, reminding us of the social Darwinist impulses behind sacrificing the elderly or infirm in favor of the young and healthy.

Tade Thompson, Far From The Light of Heaven
(Orbit)

Tade Thompson, known for the Rosewater trilogy and The Murders of Molly Southbourne, is quite possibly the most creative science fiction author around today, and Far From the Light of Heaven cements his reputation for stunning insights into the future and the human mind. In the distant future, a colonization ship docks in the Lagos sector, but some of the sleepers on board never awake, and an outside investigator is called in to find out what—or who—can be deemed responsible for the deaths.