Book #60 – Space Prison

I grabbed this book at a discount, and wasn’t sure how I’d like it at first. In Space Prison, a large colony ship of humans, fleeing the “Gerns” a race that enslaves them, is stopped on the way to a free planet. Half the group is kept as slaves, the rest dropped on a semi-hospitable planet, supposedly with supplies and told they will be picked up and “relocated” later.

They aren’t.

They’re dropped on a primitive planet, with very few supplies and weapons, and immediately their 1400 number dwindles from “Hell fever” that kills the same day, and prowlers that attack in the night. Almost half of them are killed as they struggle to survive.

I don’t usually like the primitive stories, dealing with times without technology and electricity, but this one amazed me. It’s a planet with two suns, that move in and out, so that the planet seems to alternate between ice ages and extreme summers (for some parts of it). The humans must learn to survive, but they must survive across generations. The book covers 200 years as subsequent generations learn to adapt, and slowly exact their revenge on the Gerns.

It’s amazing, and it’s a story that you have to give time to, and appreciate the need to think long term, about future generations, and not just what you can accomplish.