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Comment by decafninja | Hacker News Reader

There's a recent science fiction book I read where one of the premises is a generation starship designed to escape an apocalyptic Earth, but for reasons never manages to launch from its underground hangar. Yet its passenger population, locked inside its habitat module, live and die through multiple generations over hundreds of years thinking they are traveling through space.

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P.A. VOICE: Trans-Stellar Space Lines would like to apologise to passengers for the continuing delay for the departure of this flight.

FORD: Hey, weird.

P.A. VOICE: We are currently awaiting the loading of our compliment of small, lemon-soaked paper napkins for your comfort, refreshment, and hygiene during the flight, which will be of two hours duration. Meanwhile we thank you for your patience. The cabin crew will shortly be serving coffee and biscuits… again.

FORD: Zaphod! How long has this ship been standing here?

ZAPHOD: Man, there’s a departure board right behind us and I’ve been looking at the flight schedules. Man this ship is late, man this ship is very, very late! Man this ship is over nine-hundred years late.

- Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Funny, I'm just reading the Guide and this scrne in my version Zaphood alone (no Ford around). However, the sentiment stays the same.

This is from the original radio play. The books were written later, and had quite a few details changed.

Warning: spoilers!

They also made the pretty good (and of course prematurely cancelled) 2014 mini series "Ascension" out of a very similar plot. Admittedly, although it stars absolutely top notch, it goes a bit downhill afterwards, but they could have saved it very easily instead of taking the easiest path. I wonder why aren't there incentives to prevent premature cancellations when the public likes the material? It seems they're eager to kill even profitable series if starting a new one from scratch brings more money, which seems logical, however, besides angering viewers, that way the cancelled series loses appeal and value also as a later DVD edition product.

At least in the case of Netflix, they are profitable because the actors contracts are heavily backloaded... and then surprised pikachu face the shows get canceled right before the escalator clauses kick in, typically after the 3rd season.

Topic drift, but remember that the business model for streaming series is different from traditional television. Netflix makes them to get you to buy a subscription. There's little new audience coming on board after two or three seasons of a show; the better proposition is to start up a new series instead. It's not like the traditional broadcast networks where every installment generates more advertising views as long as they can keep making it. This is also why streaming "seasons" are ten episodes or even less, compared to twenty-plus for traditional TV. Their motivation is minimum cost to get a subscription, not maximum supply to engage you.

That makes sense, thank you. On a second thought however, it could also work backwards: how can some people be motivated to subscribe for a new show knowing that the odds of it being cancelled are that high? Ideally, producers should ask by contract for a minimum number of episodes to give closure to stories. Of course I write this as an angered viewer.

There’s a Dr Who episode about a civilization trapped in an underground highway with a similar outcome.

Update: found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridlock_(Doctor_Who)

SPOILERS.

Similarly, there's the the TV series Noisnecsa (reverse the letters) where it starts out with the premise that they've going through space on such an inter-generational voyage, in a massive, self-sustaining ship. Then later there's a reveal that it's just experimental and stayed on the ground the whole time, with mission control monitoring them and periodically communicating.

(It was described as a hybrid of Mad Men and Battlestar Galactica.)

Reminds me of a (very cyberpunk) short story I read in the late 90s in Asimov's, where a pair of super-hackers infiltrate a secrete bunker under the Gobi desert to find the same, populated by ethnicities the Chinese government made "disappear". (also the base of the cavern featured a pool of constructor ooze that evolved designs that would then be industrialized by China)

Wish I could remember the author and title, it's been sticking with me ever since.

Edit: Thanks to u/zem's hint, it's Taklamakan by Bruce Sterling, featured in Asimov's October 1998.

Bruce Sterling, one of his shaper/mechanist stories.

Huh. I haven't read anything else by him, though I've heard many gushing recommendations of his works (by other authors!). So that's up my list.

Edit: Awesome! It's Taklamakan by Bruce Sterling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taklamakan_(short_story)

check out "a good old-fashioned future" for a very nice sample of his work.

How cruel is it to post a summary like this without mentioning the name of the book???

Don't know that book, but do read Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss. The Wikipedia article contains spoilers.

Strange. That sounds almost exactly like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries)

I actually enjoyed that.

That's a quite frequent trope in Russian space fiction. I guess that's a reflection of how USSR expected to go in the future but went nowhere.

There is a classic SF short story to similar effect, "The Wind Blows Free" by Chad Oliver. (Unfortunately, a quick google search didn't turn up the text, though it exists in a number of printed compilations.)

https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v013n01_...

There was also a TV series with that premise in 2014, as a late plot twist. I guess naming it would spoil it.

Oooo I think I know that book. Really good book. I didn't see that twist coming.

This is the plot of Ascension

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries)

What book is this?

Yes please share.

Not the commenter, this premise is a story line in Anthony Doerr's "Cloud Cuckoo Land" (2021). This knowledge is a bit of a spoiler, however.

The child comments seem to suggest that your comment was kind of a spoiler. Is it still worth reading despite this knowledge?

There's an older short story "Thirteen to Centaurus" by JG Ballard with an interesting take on this.

(spoiler) i recently listened to a german audio drama "ki-mom" with a similar plot.

Thanks for the suggestion. I found it in the ARD-Mediathek. My vacation begins tomorrow and now I have something to listen to on my train ride to Vienna (which hopefully will leave the station).

if you enjoy german scifi audio drama, i found a few more:

2080: https://querschnitt.tumblr.com/

https://www.hoerspielprojekt.de/genre/science-fiction/

https://www.mindcrushers.de/

https://www.rick-future.de/

https://timeshift.blackdays.de/

https://www.serotonin-audio.de/

https://www.gratis-hoerspiele.de/alle-kostenlosen-science-fi...

there is also a 20GB torrent with lots of 1-hour german radio episodes. you can find it under the name: "german_audiobooks_radio-science-fiction". there are more of those on youtube.

and for star trek fans there is the german series eberswalde. http://www.raumschiff-eberswalde.com/

there is of course 10 times more in english...

Although it's been done before, I suspect you were reading a M.R. Forbes novel :P

That sounds interesting. What is it called?

this is the premise of ascension. it was cancelled by netflix after 1 season

wellwearewaiting.gif

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