Ship of Fools

Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo

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This turns out to be one of the best science fiction books I've read in a long time.

Actually, that's a bit of a misnomer - it's actually a mash-up of science fiction and horror. Nonetheless, despite the horror elements, the topic of “first contact” is a classic theme of science fiction, and this is a “first contact” on steroids.

The story is gothic. The narroator of the story, Bartolomeo, is a deformed member of a multigeneration ship, the Argonos. The Argonos can move faster than light, but there are still long transit times in interplanetary space. The Argonos itself seems to be quite large; I got the sense of it being the size of a small asteroid. There are different levels in the ship which approximate the social classes from aristocrats at the upper level to impressed dregs who want off the ship in the depths. (Strangely, the “crew” seems to be outside of the class system.) The whole thing is ruled by a Captain, a position which is mostly hereditary but subject to the control of an oligarchy known as the ship's executive council.

Stranger still, there is a Christian (Catholic or Episcopalian) bishop on the ship and he is almost as powerful as the Captain. The bishop plays the heavy in the story.

The population of the Argonos is demoralized. They and their ancestors have been on the ship for so long that no one remembers the mission. It seems that they make contact with inhabited worlds every decade or so as they wander aimlessly in the outer zones of human expansion. How that expansion preceded them, whether there is a civilized core, who sent them out, is unknown and unexplained. Although the fact that the ship incorporates a massive cathedral and has a bishop seems to suggest that its purpose may have been to support a Christian mission to the outer galaxy, but this is speculation, and if that was the case, then the mission is forgotten, although the bishop seems very heavy-handed in his evangelical agenda.

The Argonos receives a distress beacon. If there is one thing we have learned from watching the Alien movies, distress beacons are never good.

The Argonos investigates and finds that the human colony appears to have abandoned this planet, named “Antioch” by the bishop. Bartolomeo learns that this appearance is deceptive when he discovers a strange structure that presents the tortured bodies of the settlement. The Argonos executive council decides that (a) this happened a long time ago, (b) it's not their job to investigate disturbing mysteries, and (c) there's no time to leave like now.

They leave, but on the way out they discover an abandoned alien ship. As far as they know, no human has ever discovered an alien intelligence before. So, they have - HAVE TO! - investigate. Bartolomeo is assigned the investigation of the spooky, empty, alien spaceship where people die in freak accidents on a random basis.

At this point, the story moves into horror territory as the demoralized atmosphere of the Argonos transforms into the creepiness of shadows and echoes. Is the ship empty? Could it be a trap? What about those hundreds of colonist bodies impaled on spikes and tortured?

This story has conflict on a lot of levels. There is a political tension between the bishop and the captain, between the captain and Bartolomeo, who had been life-long friends whos relationship has grown sour, between the social levels on the ship, between those who want to cut and run and those who want to investigate, and, mostly, between, the fear of the unknown and the reality of discovery.

The writing was nicely introspective when that was appropriate. It kept my interest from start to finish, which is saying a lot these days.