.Original Novel Title: Ship of Fools
Author: Richard Paul Russo
Publisher: New York: Ace Books, January 9, 2001 (paperback)
Set on a colony starship, just like Robert Heinlein's classic Orphans of the Sky (1951), Russo's starship features a historian and an archives. Unfortunately, just as has happened many times on Earth in the past and present, a revolt by passengers included the destruction of early records, including navigational charts. And, as in Walter M. Miller Jr.'s Canticle for Leibowitz (1960), the Christian religious authority of the starship Argonos maintained its own set of records relating to the voyage. The church records, however, are not indexed in any fashion, only stored in chronological order and apparently handwritten. The church records do not, nevertheless, contain information that allows the ship's captain to resolve the horror he, his crew, and passengers face.
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The Fictional World of
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Submitted by David Mattison, 2004.02.01. Updated 2004.02.01.