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librarydanielle's review against another edition
5.0
while not particularly fast paced or even fantasticly written this was a powerful story. the simplistic writing added a depth that made the growth of the characters more striking. morality, ethics, prejudice, and stagnancy are all addressed (among others) in a manner that makes you think.
cesarbustios's review against another edition
4.0
"If I had the opportunity, I would make the proposal that no man should be killed except by somebody who knows him well enough for the act to have impact. No death should be like nose blowing. Death is important enough that it should affect the person who causes it."
A fine coming-of-age novel that is still relevant today.
This was Panshin's first published novel and my introduction to his work. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1968 and was also nominated for the Hugo Award for Best novel in 1969 (losing to Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar; Delany's Nova was nominated this same year too). And now I can see why.
There's something very fascinating for me in the anthropological and psychological aspects of living in spaceships, or any other man-made space structures for that matter (e.g., space stations, merchants). I've read about this before in novels by Heinlein, Silverberg, Delany, Cherryh, just to name a few, and the bottom line is that a new culture will emerge and with it a new set of rules that will favor sustainability. I think Panshin did a great job with the world building and depicting the life of a little girl living under this context, waiting for the Trial to come. They don't just send 14-year-old kids to die in a colony planet, they receive actual training in Survival Class, but despite that, the mortality rate is fairly high. As cruel as it may sound the Trial has a purpose: ensure that those who survive are skilled enough to contribute.
It was really fun and thought-provoking to experience the character's evolution through a series of events and little adventures that end up broadening her world and growing her confidence and moral not only towards her own people but towards the colonists as well. The other major aspect of the book is related to the differences between the ship people and the colonists (derogatorily known as "Mudeaters"). A lot of different subjecs are discussed throughout the book: ethics, philosophy, slavery. Solid story, beautiful book.
A fine coming-of-age novel that is still relevant today.
This was Panshin's first published novel and my introduction to his work. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1968 and was also nominated for the Hugo Award for Best novel in 1969 (losing to Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar; Delany's Nova was nominated this same year too). And now I can see why.
There's something very fascinating for me in the anthropological and psychological aspects of living in spaceships, or any other man-made space structures for that matter (e.g., space stations, merchants). I've read about this before in novels by Heinlein, Silverberg, Delany, Cherryh, just to name a few, and the bottom line is that a new culture will emerge and with it a new set of rules that will favor sustainability. I think Panshin did a great job with the world building and depicting the life of a little girl living under this context, waiting for the Trial to come. They don't just send 14-year-old kids to die in a colony planet, they receive actual training in Survival Class, but despite that, the mortality rate is fairly high. As cruel as it may sound the Trial has a purpose: ensure that those who survive are skilled enough to contribute.
It was really fun and thought-provoking to experience the character's evolution through a series of events and little adventures that end up broadening her world and growing her confidence and moral not only towards her own people but towards the colonists as well. The other major aspect of the book is related to the differences between the ship people and the colonists (derogatorily known as "Mudeaters"). A lot of different subjecs are discussed throughout the book: ethics, philosophy, slavery. Solid story, beautiful book.
tlsouthard's review against another edition
3.0
IRL book club selection for June. It was good - I can see why it was beloved to the member who picked it when she was a teen. I thought it wandered too much and then rushed the end. I thought the "trial" time should have been dealt with in a few more pages than it was.
nwhyte's review against another edition
http://nhw.livejournal.com/724118.html[return][return]A rather good retelling of Heinlein's Tunnel In The Sky, with better world-building and characterisation. Mia, our narrator and heroine, has grown up on a generation starship where the young folks must endure a month on the surface of whatever nearby planet is handy to become full citizens. Her father, incidentally, is a senior politician on the starship.[return][return]This better-than-average sf Bildungsroman is then completely wrecked by the concluding section, in which Mia's people decide to blow up the planet on which she underwent her rite of passage - not because of the brutal treatment meted out by its inhabitants to her and her friends, not because they might be a potential military threat in the future, but purely because they don't use contraception enough. A truly great author might have made this into a great sf story (or at least a satisfactory denouement), but unfortunately Panshin isn't up to it.[return][return]So, an OK book with a terrible conclusion.
kiwi_fruit's review against another edition
2.0
I enjoyed the first two parts of this book, especially the discussions on population and power ethics and the bartering of technology, however the third part - The trial – was a disappointment. 2 ½ stars
Spoiler
: the adventure resembled a Western rather than Sci-fi and I didn’t like the fact that sex between kids just turned 14 was treated so casuallycindywho's review against another edition
3.0
Dated SF published in 1968. It's one of those books that's entertaining in how it reflects its own time more than the future it's describing, though with a few surprises, including a disturbing ending. It's a bit over-explanatory and preachy, but a good adventure most of the time. (November 19, 2006)
hoppy500's review against another edition
4.0
Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin (My latest book review)
Mia Havero was born on one of the seven great starships constructed from hollowed-out asteroids, originally intended to transport colonists from Earth to more than one hundred colony worlds. But then the people of Earth destroyed their own planet, and the survivors among mankind are now scattered among these colonies, with the Ships continuously traveling between them, trading technical knowledge for raw materials. When teenage inhabitants of these vessels reach the age of fourteen, they undergo Trial, which involves being abandoned on one of the colony worlds to fend for themselves for a month without any contact with their respective Ships. They are given comprehensive training in the months before they leave and are provided with a small amount of survival gear. But since the colony worlds can be dangerous, a small percentage of these young people do not survive. This loss helps to keep the strictly-controlled population within safe limits while weeding out those who may be less fit for survival. Those who do return are granted full rights as adults, hence the title Rite of Passage.
The first half of the book does not contain much in the way of adventure. It is a description of the everyday life of Mia, a young girl living on one of the Ships, told from her perspective and replete with her opinions and musings. Mia tells us about the culture and prejudices of those who live alongside her, and she shares the views of her influential father on most issues. Many of Mia’s experiences are common to all young people everywhere. The only hints of adventure in this part of the book are a dangerous exploration of the ventilation system in an unfamiliar part of the Ship, and the ‘borrowing’ of spacesuits to conduct a potentially fatal spacewalk on the exterior of the asteroid which encases the Ship.
Although Mia seems to make up her mind very easily about the relative values of philosophical systems, she really only has a very superficial grasp of the complexities of these ideas, and many obvious questions do not even occur to her until during and after her period of Trial. In this way, the book realistically portrays the confidence and the folly of youth. The second half of the book is much more action-packed, and describes Mia’s period of Trial on a particularly unfriendly colony planet.
Moral and ethical questions which seemed clear-cut to Mia before Trial, now appear much more complicated, and when some of these issues are discussed openly by a Ship’s Assembly in the final part of the story, Mia is forced by her newly-acquired convictions to take a stand diametrically opposite to that of her father.
Some of most thought-provoking content consists of Mia’s musings on the nature of things. Here are some direct quotes from the book:
"I don't like the idea of people who don't sing to themselves when they're all alone. They're too sober for me. At least hum-- anybody can do that."
"The truth is, I guess, I just find it easier to cope with things than with people."
"It doesn’t hurt to like the inevitable."
"I had never realized before that adventures took so much doing, so much preparation and so much cleaning up afterward. That’s something you don’t see in stories. Who buys the food and cooks it, washes the dishes, minds the baby, to swing from, blows fanfares, polishes medals, and dies beautifully, all so that the hero can be a hero? Who finances him? I’m not saying I don’t believe in heroes — I’m just saying that they are either parasites or they spend the bulk of their time in making their little adventures possible, not in enjoying them."
"The trouble with stoicism, it seems to me, is that it is a soporific. It affirms the status quo and thereby puts an end to all ambition, all change. It says, as Christianity did a thousand years ago, that kings should be kings and slaves should be slaves, and it seems to me that that is a philosophy infinitely more attractive to the king than the slave."
"Whether or not your actions are determined, you have to act on the assumption that you have free will. If you are determined, your attempt at free will loses you nothing. However, if you are not determined and you act on the assumption that you are, you will never attempt anything. You will simply be a passive blob that things happen to."
"I believe in judging people by their faces, myself. A man can’t help the face he owns, but he can help the expression he wears on it. If a man looks mean, I generally believe he is unless I have reason to change my mind."
"Maturity is the ability to sort the portions of truth from the accepted lies and self-deceptions that you have grown up with. "
"I've always wondered what it would be like to be a spear carrier in somebody else's story. A spear carrier is somebody who stands in the hall when Caesar passes, comes to attention and thumps his spear. A spear carrier is the anonymous character cut down by the hero as he advances to save the menaced heroine. A spear carrier is a character put in a story to be used like a piece of disposable tissue. . . . The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers. We take no joy in being used and discarded. "
"If I had the opportunity, I would make the proposal that no man should be killed except by somebody who knows him well enough for the act to have impact. No death should be like nose blowing. Death is important enough that it should affect the person who causes it."
"If you meet life squarely, you are likely to make mistakes, do things you wish you hadn't, say things you wish you could retract or phrase more felicitously, and, in short, fumble your way along. Those "mature" people whose lives are even without a single sour note or a single mistake, who never fumble, manage only at the cost of original thought and original action. They do without the successes as well as the failures."
I think this book would have been viewed as considerably unconventional when it was first published in 1968, and that is partly why it won a Nebula Award for Best Novel and was nominated for a Hugo. It is a very well-written and structured piece of work which still contains much of relevance for readers today, and it clearly has a unique place among science fiction coming-of-age stories.
Mia Havero was born on one of the seven great starships constructed from hollowed-out asteroids, originally intended to transport colonists from Earth to more than one hundred colony worlds. But then the people of Earth destroyed their own planet, and the survivors among mankind are now scattered among these colonies, with the Ships continuously traveling between them, trading technical knowledge for raw materials. When teenage inhabitants of these vessels reach the age of fourteen, they undergo Trial, which involves being abandoned on one of the colony worlds to fend for themselves for a month without any contact with their respective Ships. They are given comprehensive training in the months before they leave and are provided with a small amount of survival gear. But since the colony worlds can be dangerous, a small percentage of these young people do not survive. This loss helps to keep the strictly-controlled population within safe limits while weeding out those who may be less fit for survival. Those who do return are granted full rights as adults, hence the title Rite of Passage.
The first half of the book does not contain much in the way of adventure. It is a description of the everyday life of Mia, a young girl living on one of the Ships, told from her perspective and replete with her opinions and musings. Mia tells us about the culture and prejudices of those who live alongside her, and she shares the views of her influential father on most issues. Many of Mia’s experiences are common to all young people everywhere. The only hints of adventure in this part of the book are a dangerous exploration of the ventilation system in an unfamiliar part of the Ship, and the ‘borrowing’ of spacesuits to conduct a potentially fatal spacewalk on the exterior of the asteroid which encases the Ship.
Although Mia seems to make up her mind very easily about the relative values of philosophical systems, she really only has a very superficial grasp of the complexities of these ideas, and many obvious questions do not even occur to her until during and after her period of Trial. In this way, the book realistically portrays the confidence and the folly of youth. The second half of the book is much more action-packed, and describes Mia’s period of Trial on a particularly unfriendly colony planet.
Moral and ethical questions which seemed clear-cut to Mia before Trial, now appear much more complicated, and when some of these issues are discussed openly by a Ship’s Assembly in the final part of the story, Mia is forced by her newly-acquired convictions to take a stand diametrically opposite to that of her father.
Some of most thought-provoking content consists of Mia’s musings on the nature of things. Here are some direct quotes from the book:
"I don't like the idea of people who don't sing to themselves when they're all alone. They're too sober for me. At least hum-- anybody can do that."
"The truth is, I guess, I just find it easier to cope with things than with people."
"It doesn’t hurt to like the inevitable."
"I had never realized before that adventures took so much doing, so much preparation and so much cleaning up afterward. That’s something you don’t see in stories. Who buys the food and cooks it, washes the dishes, minds the baby, to swing from, blows fanfares, polishes medals, and dies beautifully, all so that the hero can be a hero? Who finances him? I’m not saying I don’t believe in heroes — I’m just saying that they are either parasites or they spend the bulk of their time in making their little adventures possible, not in enjoying them."
"The trouble with stoicism, it seems to me, is that it is a soporific. It affirms the status quo and thereby puts an end to all ambition, all change. It says, as Christianity did a thousand years ago, that kings should be kings and slaves should be slaves, and it seems to me that that is a philosophy infinitely more attractive to the king than the slave."
"Whether or not your actions are determined, you have to act on the assumption that you have free will. If you are determined, your attempt at free will loses you nothing. However, if you are not determined and you act on the assumption that you are, you will never attempt anything. You will simply be a passive blob that things happen to."
"I believe in judging people by their faces, myself. A man can’t help the face he owns, but he can help the expression he wears on it. If a man looks mean, I generally believe he is unless I have reason to change my mind."
"Maturity is the ability to sort the portions of truth from the accepted lies and self-deceptions that you have grown up with. "
"I've always wondered what it would be like to be a spear carrier in somebody else's story. A spear carrier is somebody who stands in the hall when Caesar passes, comes to attention and thumps his spear. A spear carrier is the anonymous character cut down by the hero as he advances to save the menaced heroine. A spear carrier is a character put in a story to be used like a piece of disposable tissue. . . . The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers. We take no joy in being used and discarded. "
"If I had the opportunity, I would make the proposal that no man should be killed except by somebody who knows him well enough for the act to have impact. No death should be like nose blowing. Death is important enough that it should affect the person who causes it."
"If you meet life squarely, you are likely to make mistakes, do things you wish you hadn't, say things you wish you could retract or phrase more felicitously, and, in short, fumble your way along. Those "mature" people whose lives are even without a single sour note or a single mistake, who never fumble, manage only at the cost of original thought and original action. They do without the successes as well as the failures."
I think this book would have been viewed as considerably unconventional when it was first published in 1968, and that is partly why it won a Nebula Award for Best Novel and was nominated for a Hugo. It is a very well-written and structured piece of work which still contains much of relevance for readers today, and it clearly has a unique place among science fiction coming-of-age stories.
kuzminichna's review against another edition
3.0
Not sure why this won the Nebula award. Perhaps it is just a bit too boring and straightforward for an adult reader. It revolves around a little girl who grows up in a spaceship. It might be more interesting to teen girls.
mephistia's review against another edition
5.0
I really liked it. A friend of mine lent it to me, his dad wrote it, and I was really impressed with this one. I have to admit, I was concerned I wouldn't because I'm a little picky about my sci-fi and fantasy. But this was a really cool book -- good pacing, good plot, and well-written characterization. Normally I dislike the first-person pov, but it works well here. I also like the hints of the untold stories -- the people on the worlds, and the way we see glimpses of these fully integrated, growing, incredible societies -- but only touches and glimpses. It's really fascinating. I want to read more, about what happens after with Mia and Jimmy, and about lives on the various worlds, and lives on different ships. I find myself simultaneously incredibly delighted with this book and incredibly disappointed that it's a one-off.
sjstuart's review against another edition
3.0
The writers who gave this book the Nebula award in 1968, and the many reviewers who mention the lasting impression it has made on them, must all have gotten more out it than I did. I can appreciate the resemblance to [a:Heinlein|6468454|Robert Heinlein|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]'s juvenile novels, and the similarity in tone and content to [b:To Kill a Mockingbird|2657|To Kill a Mockingbird|Harper Lee|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327879116s/2657.jpg|3275794], both of which I admire in different ways. But this book comes up short in the comparison.
Overall, everything about the book is just a little too easy. The writing relies too much on simple, declarative sentences. The plot is entertaining, but merely hops along from one set piece to another. The moral themes are worked into the story fairly well, but it's fairly obvious when you're being lectured to. Overall, it reads a lot like a young adult novel, although I don't think it was written to be one.
It's impossible to read the book without being reminded of its age, as well. The characters read as if they were drawn from the 1950's, using words like "swell" and "Gee!". This seems especially anachronistic coming from the mouths of spaceship-dwelling elites at the dawn of the twenty-third century, who look down their noses at the backward planet-dwellers, who happen to speak a modified form on English. It's not that I expect a writer from 1968 to be able to sound futuristic nearly a half century in the future, but I think this book have sounded a bit conservative even when it was written -- at least as far as its language is concerned. Other aspects, such as the female protagonist and the sex scene between young adolescents, would have been more noteworthy in the 60's, but don't raise eyebrows now.
It's not that the book was bad, by any means. It was enjoyable enough, and the deeper themes underlying the story make it more than just a pulp novel. But in the end I didn't get enough out of it to see the reason for its status as a classic.
Overall, everything about the book is just a little too easy. The writing relies too much on simple, declarative sentences. The plot is entertaining, but merely hops along from one set piece to another. The moral themes are worked into the story fairly well, but it's fairly obvious when you're being lectured to. Overall, it reads a lot like a young adult novel, although I don't think it was written to be one.
It's impossible to read the book without being reminded of its age, as well. The characters read as if they were drawn from the 1950's, using words like "swell" and "Gee!". This seems especially anachronistic coming from the mouths of spaceship-dwelling elites at the dawn of the twenty-third century, who look down their noses at the backward planet-dwellers, who happen to speak a modified form on English. It's not that I expect a writer from 1968 to be able to sound futuristic nearly a half century in the future, but I think this book have sounded a bit conservative even when it was written -- at least as far as its language is concerned. Other aspects, such as the female protagonist and the sex scene between young adolescents, would have been more noteworthy in the 60's, but don't raise eyebrows now.
It's not that the book was bad, by any means. It was enjoyable enough, and the deeper themes underlying the story make it more than just a pulp novel. But in the end I didn't get enough out of it to see the reason for its status as a classic.