The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years

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The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years is a

Don Wilcox that was first published in Amazing Stories in October 1940.[1] It has been credited as the first fictitious story to be based on the concept of a generational starship
.

Plot

The story involves the voyage of the Flashaway on its journey to start a colony on the planet Robinello, which is estimated to require hundreds of years to complete. In order to ensure that the crew remains on-mission, historian Professor Grimstone is placed in

who arrived in faster ships
.

Reception

The underlying concept of a generation ship predates "The Voyage" by some time. Most notably, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky mentions the idea in his 1928 essay, "The Future of Earth and Mankind".[2]

"The Voyage", however, is widely regarded as the first use of the concept in fiction.[3] It was published only shortly before Robert A. Heinlein's much more famous May 1941 "Universe".[4] Both stories are broadly similar, involving a generation ship on which the passengers forget their past and come to see the ship as their original home.[5] Brian Ash suggested that the first fictional treatment of the concept predates Wilcox's story, nothing the appearance of similar concept - but not central to the plot - in Laurence Manning's The Living Galaxy (1934).[6]: 74 

The story was also the inspiration for A. E. van Vogt's "Far Centaurus", via John W. Campbell, which is based on the idea of arriving at a now-populated planet. In this case, the story revolves around four men on a sleeper ship, not a generational ship, who learn that their 500-year trip now only takes three hours.[7]

References

Citations

  1. ^ Wilcox 1940.
  2. ^ Caroti 2009, p. v.
  3. ^ Caroti 2009, p. 13.
  4. ^ Bone 2014.
  5. ^ Caroti 2009, p. 14.
  6. ISBN 978-0-517-53174-7
    .
  7. ^ Walwyn 2015.

Bibliography

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