| Colony | |
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First edition cover |
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| Author(s) | Rob Grant |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Comedy, Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
| Publication date | 2 November 2000 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 288 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-670-88965-2 (first edition, hardback) |
| OCLC Number | 44183857 |
Colony was the first novel written by Rob Grant outside the Red Dwarf series. First published in 2000 by Viking Press in the United Kingdom it stays within the comedy, science fiction genre. The narrative is set on a spaceship sent on a voyage to colonise another planet, since Earth has been rendered uninhabitable. The mission is set to take numerous generations. Ten generations into the voyage, however, the crew's mental abilities have all been severely reduced, setting the events of the novel in motion.
Contents |
The story starts on Earth in the future. Global warming and over population has caused an imminent apocalypse. The hope for the survival of the human race is a spaceship called the Willflower, which will take a small number of the world's best minds on a journey to colonize another planet. Eddie O'Hare, the protagonist, is not one of them. He is deep in debt due to his computer having mysteriously stolen several million dollars online, then sending it to an unknown location. As such, he decides to gamble what money he has left in the hope of getting enough to pay back the debts. On his way to the casino, he meets a pink-socked assassin who he fears may have been sent to kill him. It turns out that he has not (or at least, Eddie is not the man's current target).
When gambling his the last of his money, Eddie wins- thanks to him mimicking the gambling decisions of a man who looks uncannily like himself-, but the casino is no longer operational; due to the Willflower's imminent departure, the town (which was created only to house people working on the project), is closing down, and the casino has already lost all its money to the other man. He leaves and decides to hide. Whilst doing so, he happens to meet the man whose luck he 'piggy-backed' on earlier. He discovers that the other man, Charles Perry Gordon, is due to go on the Willflower but doesn't want to go now that he was won such a vast amount of money. Due to the ramifications for the rest of his family Gordon cannot refuse to leave, so he offers Eddie a place in place of himself. Eddie successfully smuggles himself on board (Unaware that Gordon had intended to sell him out as an impostor once the ship took off and it was too late for him to join the mission, only for Gordon to be killed by the hitmen he hired to simulate Eddie's alleged 'assault' because they had also been hired by the casino staff to get the money back). As Gordon's job is the community planner, Eddie reads the plans so far to learn more about his job and discovers that the man he is replacing has enforced a fascist, totalitarian system: crew members are paired for life before they are even born, and jobs- even unpleasant ones such as prostitution- are inherited. However, shortly after the ship sets off he is murdered by an unknown assailant.
The story then jumps forward several generations. He is revived as a cyborg with only his head and spinal column remaining of his original body, and trapped forever in a jar of green slime (Even worse, the nerve endings are incorrectly wired, so that, for example, he moves his right arm when trying to move his left foot). He finds himself on a ship full of idiots and that there is something going wrong with the ship; all but one of its engines are gone and it has only 20% of its manoeuvring thrusters. The ship needs to land soon, but only three planets are available: Thrrrppp, which is the most habitable but with no way for the ship to enter orbit, Penis, which the ship has a 50% chance of docking with but is covered in volcanoes, and Panties, which is totally hostile but has a 90% chance of docking. As the only intelligent life form on board it is up to him to find out what is happening.
As he explores the ship, he meets more of the ship's mentally retarded crew, none of which have even the slightest ability to perform their jobs. He is puzzled by this, the fact that the crew is totally illiterate and, most importantly, the fact that the ship, which has been shown to be able to self-repair itself if it takes damage, has not done so. The ship is also on a collision course with a massive gas giant which does not appear on the radar system. The ship's less than moral priest attempts to leave in the nuclear powered escape pod, but fails thanks to the captain overriding the system. Eddie decides to cause the escape pod to self-destruct in the hope that the explosion will force the ship towards planet Thrrrppp. This fails when the priest steals the pod- accompanied by some of the ship's prostitutes to help him 'rebuild' human society, destroying the remaining engines in the process.
Eddy is forced to leave the ship and go and see what is happening. Outside, he is drawn back into the ship by an unknown force. He encounters the assassin from the beginning of the novel, still intent on fulfilling his centuries-old contract (At the same time, Eddie has a flashback where he realises that the original Father Lewis killed him to stop him spreading 'his' mad plans any further). Before he can do so, however, the ship kills him. It then talks to Eddy and reveals what has been happening. Its internal self-repair systems, it transpires, were also capable of self-modification, eventually becoming self aware. Realizing the madness that the original crew had instigated, it made the crew members illiterate to erase all memory of the old system. It has also gained the ability to time travel into the past, where it can affect electronics, but not take a physical form. Back on Earth, humanity has become extinct; the crew of the Willflower are all that is left. The ship had selected Eddie to look after the crew as he was the only person with sufficiently low self-esteem to survive the cybernetic revival system; the sheer horror of the suit would have driven anyone else insane, but Eddie expected so little out of life that he actually came through the process as a better person. The ship causes Eddy's computer to steal the money (instigating the series of events that caused Eddie to arrive on the ship), then repairs itself and flies the crew to planet Thrrrppp.
Received initial very well by the SciFi buying public the novel continued to sell strongly into following years. By March 2002 it had sold more than 22,500 copies[1].
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