Firefly: Generations is a 2020 novel by Tim Lebbon set in the Firefly 'Verse. It is the third novel set between the events of Firefly and Serenity, effectively being "Season 2" of the show.
As usual, the crew of Serenity are looking for work. On a gamble, Mal decides to head to horrible little town Wash knows about on the hope someone he knew from the Independents (but emphatically not a war buddy) might be able to hook them up with a job. Things naturally fail to go at all according to plan, but Mal stumbles on a map that might lead them something greater than they could have dreamed.
This Novel includes examples of the following tropes:
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Not that anyone realized it at the time. The map one player tosses in as a wager in a poker-like game, that Mal wins, turns out to be a star map to an old Earth-That-Was generation ship, which could have all kinds of treasures still aboard. It's actually so that another psychic, like River, might be able to find and free Silas.
- Artifact of Death: The map is treated like one. An early chapter chronicles how it moved from hand to hand to eventually come into the possession of the man who loses it to Mal, and that passage was often violent, bloody, and deadly for whoever had the map at the time.
- Asteroid Thicket: The planetary rings around the world where the Sun-Tuz is orbiting.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Hands of Blue in this novel are a pair of women.
- Flawed Prototype: Silas, in the eyes of those running the Academy. He was considered far too dangerous to keep, but far too valuable to dispose of, so was secreted away aboard the Sun-Tzu in one of the ship's advanced suspension pods. River, and others like her, "benefit" from the Academy correcting the "mistakes" made with Silas.
- Hive Mind: The Hands of Blue seem to have this. Passages written from their POV always use "we," with dialog indicated by things like "one of us said."
- Internal Reveal: Aboard the Sun-Tzu, Kaylee sees paintings of Earth-That-Was, including one of a generation ship launching away from the planet into space. That's when she realizes that Earth-That-Was wasn't a system, like the 'Verse, but just one planet.
- It's the Only Way to Be Sure: After Silas has killed one of the Hands of Blue and destroyed the Alliance destroyer that brought them to the Sun-Tzu, the other Hands of Blue sets the Sun-Tzu to self-destruct, because recapturing Silas is impossible and he cannot be permitted to escape.
- Lost Colony: Because the flight from Earth-That-Was is Shrouded in Myth, no one knows how many ships were launched and how many actually arrived in the 'Verse. Kaylee speculates that other ships might have arrived in other systems, and there might be other people elsewhere on distant worlds, who will never know about the 'Verse and the 'Verse will never know about them. Simon considers the prospect depressing, Kaylee thinks it's hopeful.
- Lost Technology: One of the things that most interests Kaylee about finding an Earth-That-Was ship is the tech they're rumored to have that has since been lost, including the suspended animation pods and perhaps even advanced AI to monitor and control the ship's systems.
- Retcon:
- Everyone on Serenity knows about the Hands of Blue, and how many Alliance people they killed trying to get to Simon and River on Ariel, despite neither Jayne nor Simon ever seeing them or their handiwork.
- The suspension and cryogenics technology used on the Earth-That-Was sleeper ships is considered Lost Technology, with the current versions in the 'Verse being less effective and more experimental and finicky. This seems to ignore the very functional cryo crate River came aboard Serenity in.
- Ramming Always Works: Silas sets an Alliance attack shuttle docked with the Sun-Tzu to ram into the destroyer's engines, blowing it up.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Silas was put in suspension by the Alliance, since he was too valuable to kill but to dangerous to keep around. The suspension didn't entirely take, and at least part of Silas' mind has been awake, growing — he says evolving — into a far more powerful psychic than anticipated, able to overcome the countermeasures the Hands of Blue come after him with.
- Sleeper Starship: The old Earth-That-Was colony ships were a combination of this and Generation Ships. The passengers used suspension technology to sleep through the journey, but the ships still needed crews to pilot and maintain them. A lot of the actual information is lost to history, but accounts suggest that the ships took decades or centuries to travel from Earth-That-Was to the 'Verse, so crew were born, lived, and died all en route.
- Sociopathic Soldier: Mal's Independent acquaintance is heavily implied to be this, someone who made a great recruit for the Independent cause because he was very skilled at and extremely enthusiastic about killing folk.
- Super Prototype: Silas again. Whatever the Academy did to him, he's far and away more powerful than River, and River notes that if he gets what he wants from her, he'll be more powerful than anything.
- Technopath: Silas seems to have developed this ability while in suspension, able to control the systems of the Sun-Tzu with his mind.
- Wretched Hive: Golden's Bane, the town Wash directs them to. He'd been there a few days and witnessed several murders, so decided to leave immediately. Jayne thinks it sounds like his kind of place.
