The Dark Beyond the Stars

The Dark Beyond the Stars is a 1991 science fiction novel by American writer Frank M. Robinson. It is a Lambda Literary Award winner, published by Orb Books. It tells the story of a generation ship and its crew on a long mission to search for extraterrestrial life in the galaxy and the complex conflict between the Captain and the protagonist, a 17-year-old technician named Sparrow. The Captain is obsessed with continuing to search for alien life in the 2,000-year-old ship, even though it is falling apart and Sparrow is leading a mutiny which aims to return the ship to Earth. Plot The story is told through the narrative of Sparrow, a 17-year-old technician aboard the Astron, which is a multigenerational starship sent from Earth on a search for life on other planets throughout the Milky Way. Sparrow fell off a cliff during one planetside excursion and is stricken with amnesia. No one will discuss his past with him and the computer has restricted his data, reasoning that he should "look within" to fully recover. Sparrow struggles to revive his memory and familiarizes himself with the Astron, the crew, the enigmatic Captain Kusaka, the state of the ship and its mission; in which the search for extraterrestrial life has lasted over 2,000 years with no success. The ship has slowly shrunk from the crew cannibalizing sealed-off sections for parts and breaking apart from centuries of wear; meanwhile, the crew has dwindled from generations of selective breeding. The Captain wants to take the Astron to a section of the galaxy where stars are more numerous and older where planets are more likely to harbor life, but to do so they would have to cross the empty space between spiral arms they call "the Dark". Most members of the crew know that they will not survive the journey since it would take several centuries to cross and the ship would not make it with its current rate of attrition of their closed ecological system. But Captain Kusaka, who is immortal and obsessed with exploration, does not heed to the warnings and will do whatever it takes to complete the mission. As a result, the crew secretly try to plan a mutiny to seize control of the ship and return to Earth, the only place they know that harbors life.