A hard science fiction novel about a spacecraft with 50 passengers traveling to colonize a planet 33 light years away. To get there, they use a Bussard ramjet to accelerate them to a fraction of the speed of light, but along the way, they hit a nebula, damaging the engine so they have no way to slow down. As a result, they just keep accelerating closer and closer to the speed of light, dealing with the relativistic effects of time dilation.
On the plus side, it’s a good premise, and the story does a decent job of exploring it. Unfortunately, everything else is secondary to that premise. The writing feels a bit stilted and labored. The characters are all 2D tropes: the protagonist who is a man of action; the women who are there primarily to make the men feel better through sex; and so on. The plot, after revealing the implications of their dilemma, drags on (even though it’s a short book). While the concept is really cool, the way the characters react to it, and how they interact with each other, feels contrived and awkward, and it ultimately doesn’t add up to a particularly satisfying read.
