Ship of Fools

by Richard Paul Russo. I picked this up out of nowhere. I was really desperately searchng for a book or two to read while down in South Carolina and coming up really dry. I almost went for Asimov's foundation series but they didn't have the first book, so that was out. Then I saw this one and said, the hellwith it, it's got a cool cover and the author won the Philip K. Dick Award. And I scored. It's really damn good. And the characters were eerily reminiscent of sorabjites. So much so that I half suspect that Mr. Russo has been here observing. Maybe not, I could be raving. Anyway, it's set on this ship, kind of like a colony ship but it's been traveling for generations so it's kind of lost track of what it was supposed to be doing. The main character sort of reminds me of droopy, and there's a character that's pretty much a dead ringer for Rhiannon when she's talking about religion. Anyway, I digress. the plot explores the concept of what is evil, in both the human aspect and the alien aspect, and what is the nature of God in the perspective of interstellar travel, after the demise of the earth? I couldn't put it down. I strongly recommend this, especially for folks who don't read a lot of sci-fi. I really also think that spider should read it, I think she'd dig it immensely.