The novel “Orphans of the Sky” by Robert A. Heinlein was published for the first time in 1941 as two novellas titled “Universe” and “Common Sense” in the magazine “Astounding Science Fiction” and in 1963 as a book.

Hugh Hoyland was able to be admitted among the scientist apprentices. Like other young people, he refuses certain mystical interpretations of the older generation about the Trip. His ideas are turned upside down when he’s captured by a group of mutants and meets Joe-Jim, the most important of their leaders, a man with two heads.

Joe-Jim brings Hugh to places he had never seen before and forces him to get into central control, where he shows him the universe outside the Ship. For Hugh it’s a big trauma because his people think that the Ship is the universe. His discovery changes everything but how to convince the scientists without being taken for a heretic and killed?

“Orphans of the Sky” is the novel that popularized the concept of generational spaceship, a type of ship built for interstellar travel that can last centuries if not millennia at a lower speed than that of light. The crew that arrives at the end of the journey is made ​​up of the descendants of that one who started it.

In “Orphans of the Sky”, something went wrong during the trip. A mutiny caused the death of part of the crew and the destruction of part of the starship’s documents. The loss of a large part of their knowledge causes a drop into a semi-barbarism.

For some time the starship remains devoid of the screen that protects the crew from radiation and that causes the emergence of mutants. Before the law established the suppression of mutants at birth, they become an autonomous group and outlaws, who end up living in a separate part of the starship.

“Orphans of the Sky” is a novel short by today’s standards so Robert A. Heinlein tells the story of the Trip and the society at the Hugh’s time with a number of details cleverly scattered here and there in the story. The characters have a really fragmentary knowledge of what happened and the reader follows the gradual discovery by Hugh of some parts of the truth that go far beyond the dogmas he was taught.

Among the crew there’s an elite group of scientists but very soon the reader can see that in fact they are reduced to priests who interpret in a mystical-religious way the few scraps of knowledge still available. For them, the Ship is the whole universe and the Trip is a religious metaphor.

The imposed contact with Joe-Jim forces Hugh to completely revise the ideas he was taught. The exploration of areas of the Ship where for centuries only mutants have ventured allowed him to see what the universe really is. Quite unintentionally, Hugh becomes a kind of Galileo Galilei who tries to convince the scientists that the Ship moves.

In the course of the novel, Hugh’s story allows Robert A. Heinlein to describe this society that has become a kind of religious regime in which the elite has absolute power over common people. Women are barely present and on the rare occasions when they appear you can see that they’re considered little more than animals. It’s a really rare case in a Heinlein’s story and that highlights the fall into barbarism of the Ship’s society.

The events of “Orphans of the Sky” cover a long period of time and occasionally the narrative leaps forward in time. Given the short length of the novel, the story is focused on important events, generally keeping the pace fast. The protagonists are quite well developed, especially Hugh.

“Orphans of the Sky” is rightly considered a classic of science fiction in which a master like Robert A. Heinlein tells the story of a generational spaceship and the involution of the society that live in it after a mutiny. Despite its age, I think it’s still a must-have for anyone interested in science fiction.