I am keeping this as spoiler free as possible because this book has made me such a Blake Crouch hater that I must spread my hate to as many people as possible. take it off your TBRs people!!! I will not rest until you have.

this whole book is a bullet point list of the thoughts, dialogue and plot of a better sci-fi book. This includes a great cast of characters, such as; Man, Wife and Teenager. Later, we are even blessed with Woman and Villain.

Wife: so horny and in love with the MMC. Her only personality trait besides liking art. Her husband is the only thing in her life that means anything, makes no decisions for herself, he is her whole world. Questions nothing and no one. Does what she's told.

Man: Jason is an absolute nothing-burger of an MMC. He is soooooo stupid smart (which we know, because he understands Schrödinger's cat and Crouch dedicated a page in a half for Jason to explain that to us like it isn't the most famous thought experiment in the world) but instead spends this whole book stumbling around and being thrown in one direction on the other by outside forces, never doing anything remotely smart or cunning. I started rooting against him because he annoyed me so bad.

And finally, Teenager:

...that's not a mistake I just can't think of a single thing to describe that character.

The only reason this wasn't a DNF is because it was such an offensively easy read. I had to work for NOTHING in this book.

The writing was...ugh. Everything seems to come back around to sex or lust. Why am I reading page after page dissecting the quality of the sex Wife and Man are having?

It features numerous cringe inducing lines such as:

It felt like the first time you had really seen me. The first time anyone had really seen me. It was the hottest thing

Hottest???? Hottest. Whatever.

Being with Daniella isn't like home. It is home

There is barely a sentence longer than 6 words in this whole book. And every page, every bit of excruciating internal dialogue from the MMC looks like this:

I go to the shop I miss my wife I am...sad Angry No money Grr

Useless side characters that get written in and out in a line, no imagery, no atmosphere, no....intelligence. If I had written this I wouldnt show it to my postman let alone my publisher. And the fact that this is now a TV show? AND going to be a movie!?!?!? I've seen enough. Blake Crouch I am in your WALLS

the concept for this book was so fun and extremely up my alley: many many years into a generation ship's journey, the people have forgotten they're going anywhere at all and the ship is their entire world, until one day someone discovers the control room with windows to space and realizes all the "religious writings" about their purpose and destination had been literal. so cool! so much could be done with this!

well, don't worry, our favorite pro-military libertarian, our pioneer of early hard sci-fi, robert heinlein, does an incredibly mid job with it.

the issue with a lot of sci-fi canon is that it does not hold up very well, especially in the social aspects. all the characters in this book were extremely annoying smart men and very simple childlike men. the women are all extremely dehumanized (and to be honest, i'm still not sure if that was done on purpose as some kind of commentary on "primitive societies" or if this was just heinlein telling on himself. the truth is probably a mix of both).

the plot gave me a laugh because it's so silly. no effort put into anything other than some in-depth descriptions of the ship design and the science behind it (which WAS somewhat interesting). but the plot itself just kept deus ex machina-ing its way all the way to its ridiculous end.

as the new york times says on the front cover of this 2001 edition: "literate, informed and exciting!" which is hilarious but i need to once again keep in mind that this book is of its time and was originally being published during the era of shitty unoriginal pulpy sci-fi (although the nyt blurb is specifically for the 2001 edition, which is crazy).

another fun part (which is not dear robert's fault, i will say), is that on the front cover there's a hot young mutant girl in a mini skirt with her tiddies out. the actual character this image references is an old wrinkly woman that shows up for like 3 seconds in the middle of the book. fascinating marketing techniques at work here.

anyway, here's to hoping heinlein's other works have something better to offer.