PARADISES LOST

What happens when you spend your whole life - entire generations - traveling toward a goal until the endpoint becomes unattainable? As voyagers on the starship Discovery are born and live their lives on a trip to colonize a distant planet, their metal-encased world becomes more tangible to them than Earth, which they have never seen. Hsing and Luis know that the ship's ultimate destination lies in the hands of future generations, but the followers of Bliss - a religion emerging from their cocoon in space - believe that they should remain inside their spaceship heaven for eternity. In this world premiere, a star-faring adventure transforms into an inward journey of conflict and turmoil.

Paradises Lost, a 2002 science fiction novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, tells the story of the Discovery, on a 200-year voyage to explore and colonize a planet known as New Earth, or Shindychew. The ship is almost perfectly self-contained and self-sustaining, and life aboard is lively and comfortable. Hsing and Luis, members of the fifth generation, born during the voyage, know no other life, no other world. They see their purpose as keeping things going til the ship lands, many years from now. They confront the followers of Bliss, and plots arise on both sides: those who want to land on the planet and those who want to travel through heaven forever, in Bliss. When the voyage is unexpectedly shortened, conflict becomes crisis.

VERLORENE PARADIESE
Deutsch von Horst Illmer
[Atlantis: HC, 03/2014; TB 04/14; MetaGIS: Audio, 04/2017]