Journey Into Space - Toby Litt

[Rob McCow]

Journey Into Space is the story of a colony ship leaving Earth at some time in the late 21st Century and heading into space. On the way, the original point of the mission is lost as the generations of crewmembers develop their own culture and ultimately a self-destructive religion.

Toby Litt appears to be a 'literary' darling, from the reviews I've read, so the critics have viewed this as a foray into an unknown genre. Actually most of the reviews I've found to be pompous, arrogant and completely wrong. In terms of length and style the book is similar to AE Van Vogt, but not as good.

Initially, I was quite put off. There is a dreadful sex scene within the opening quarter of the novel. People have super-meaningful names such as 'August', 'Celeste', 'Australia' and later 'Orphan', 'Three' and 'the Nephew'. It's an attempt to create metaphor, but I'm not convinced that it's been completely thought through and the author simply chose the names through laziness. I found the names annoying, over-wrought and ridiculous. There's a 10-page rambling nature metaphor for a later sex scene that is unreadable and ridiculous.

What I liked and what eventually drew me in were the details. The tennis courts that are abandoned because all the tennis balls have turned to dust; the complicated quest to make paper and ink; the old Captain searching for a broken failsafe circuit so he can electrocute himself.

There's a lot of interesting literary and linguistic tricks in this book. A lot of the fat has been trimmed, so it's never clear quite how many people are on board the ship, or how they work with it - the ship's computer system, or who is relating the story. It's a history book rather than an actual story, examining the broad sweep of human effort rather than focussing on an individual, so it can seem a bit cold. The sea-changes in the ship's society seem a little unconvincing too.

It's not bad, but I get the feeling that this book was written because he wanted to write a sci-fi book, rather than because he had a story to tell.

[Jeff]

the story of a colony ship leaving Earth at some time in the late 21st Century and heading into space. On the way, the original point of the mission is lost as the generations of crewmembers develop their own culture and ultimately a self-destructive religion.

Sounds a little bit like WALL-E but less appealing.