juliamielerodas 's review for:

Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

5.0

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I revisited a couple of old favorites, Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky (1941), a dreadful and provocative little novelette about a starship community that has forgotten of any existence outside the ship and has sacralized its history and necessary science into ritual and myth--religion. The book has a great take on the conflict between the dominant members of the "crew" and the "mutie" (mutant/mutineer) community living in the unprotected levels of the ship. I read this in a kind of desperation after a swift rereading of Butler's The Way of All Flesh (1903), a thinly veiled autobiographical account of Butler's own rejection of conventional Victorian values. This time through, though, I'd lost track a bit of my love for it--the line between wry and smug was a little too finely wrought to charm.