History Main / GenerationShips

* In TabletopGame/{{Lancer}}, humanity managed to send out ten massive generation ships just before suffering a [[ApocalypseHow total collapse of Earth-based civilization]], leaving their fledgling colonies stranded and starving. So far, three have been mentioned - one starved to death before reaching its destination, one arrived just fine and became the [[FeudalFuture Karrakin Trade Baronies]], and the last arrived late and became [[{{Theotech}} the Aun]].

** Most of the larger human vessels, even if they already have warp drives, qualify. If you have mixed-gender crews aboard ships in service for hundreds if not thousands of years, "voidborn" navy brats are inevitable. The bigger ships even have problems with small civilizations growing on forgotten or unfrequented decks.
** The craftworlds of the [[SpaceElves Aeldari]] are {{Planet Spaceship}}s created from large interstellar trading vessels to act as generational refugee ships. These massive vessels have no destination in mind as they are independent colonies in their own right and, depending on the lore, have little to no faster-than-light capabilities as they are connected to [[PortalNetwork the webway]].
** Orks tend to treat space hulks as this, happily piling in when they find one with no idea where or when they might have a chance to get off again. Given the nature of the Warp, hulks' lack of direction, and the fact that orks pawn by dying and will happily turn on each other if there's no one else to fight, many generations can easily pass during travel.

* ''Literature/AcrossTheUniverse'' is set on a generation ship called the ''Godspeed'', which is on a journey to a habitable planet that will take hundreds of years to complete. While a lot of the colonists elected to be turned into {{Human Popsicle}}s for the duration of the trip, there was a need for an active crew to perform maintenance. Thus, many generations have lived and died on the ''Godspeed'' as it slowly makes its way towards its destination.

* The titular ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' colony ship.

* ''Series/AscensionMiniseries'' takes place aboard a starship intended for a 100-year voyage, launched in the 1960s. [[spoiler:Except that it doesn't. The whole thing is being faked on Earth as a huge, elaborate experiment. The reasons for this are poorly explained, but seem to be an attempt to somehow force the [[EvolutionaryLevels next step]] in (super)human [[GoalOrientedEvolution evolution]].]]

** Orks tend to treat space hulks as this, happily piling in when they find one with no idea where or when they might have a chance to get off again. Given the nature of the Warp and hulks' lack of direction, many generations can easily pass during travel.

* ''Radio/{{Earthsearch}}''. The ''Challenger'' is a low-key version of this trope; rather than a colony ship, it's a survey ship to find new worlds for humanity to move to en masse after the sun threatens to go nova. Although it's also a SleeperStarship, a year in suspended animation means the crew ages one month, so this trope is still necessary. The [[AIIsACrapshoot Angel computers]] however decide to kill off the crew and raise the next generation under their control so they will be subservient to them. In one episode they also encounter the ''Challenger II'', where the crew over the generations broke into two warring societies, with one refusing to believe that the outside universe exists and regarding Earth as their equivalent of Heaven.

* The eponymous Sidonia from ''Manga/KnightsOfSidonia'', one of several massive ships constructed to flee Earth after humanity lost the first war against the Gauna. Contact with her sister ships was lost long ago and they're presumed destroyed by the time the series opens.

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* Possibly the TropeMaker here is Don Wilcox's 1940 novelette "The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years", told from the perspective of a Keeper of the Traditions who is supposed to go into hibernation and be revived every one hundred years to check on how society is progressing and return it to the proper path if necessary. It started the venerable trope of the ship's crew forgetting about their goal and regressing civilizationally.

* The title vessel in ''Literature/RendezvousWithRama'' superficially appears to be ''failed'' example of these in the original novel as there are no apparent inhabitants in the vessel. The characters speculate that all of its inhabitants died off during the vessel's hundred-thousand year journey through space, leaving some pre-programmed robot systems in operation, although the robots are biological in nature and are created ''denovo'' whenever needed and recycled when not needed so there is no reason to believe the 'inhabitants' are not also made-on-demand. The sequels reveal that they [[spoiler: aren't intended to be generation ships (as they can accelerate to relativistic speeds) for travel but are merely prowling the cosmos to find the perfect life forms.]] They end up being generation ships anyway, because the Myrmicats at least are reproducing aboard them, nad eventualy so do the humans and octospiders. Since the trips take some time to get to all the solar systems on a given voyage and return to the node, some aliens inevitably reproduce aboard. When the stranded humans did this, they were provided for by the spaceship, with extra food, and eventually requisitioned cribs.

** The Eldar Craftworlds also count, as even though they have FTL-capabilities, they're primarily spacefaring colonies designed to house the survivors of the Fall.

* In Elizabeth Bear's ''Literature/JacobsLadderTrilogy'', the ''Jacob's Ladder'' is a generation ship on a multi-century journey to colonize another planet. It covers its bases by having a living ecosystem with crew members that are born and die en route in addition to holds carrying frozen sleepers. The society on the ''Jacob's Ladder'' has regressed to a quasi-medieval feudal system that considers the ship's fragmented AI to be angels on one side and a quasi-city known as Engine on the other, who are at war. And though they have developed technologies that allow them to technically live forever, they are only made accessible to the Exalts of the House of Rule, while everyone else is a Mean and not worthy of it. Additionally, large parts of the ship had broken down and stopped to function, making travel between Rule and Engine extremely difficult and leaving parts of the ship to fend for themselves. [[spoiler:The last book not only reveals that the feudal system was intentional and the ship was originally launched by religious fanatics whom nobody else on Earth wanted anything to do with, but also that technology has marched on. When the ''Jacob's Ladder'' finally arrives at a habitable planet they find it already colonized by other humans, who also consider the inhabitants of the ship to be fanatical aliens because their technology has changed them so much from their anchestors.]]

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[[caption-width-right:350:The U.S.S Ascension's 100 year mission]]

A Generation Ship is almost always a StarshipLuxurious -- it's got to sustain the equivalent of an entire ecosystem, whether it does so with rivets-and-bolts machinery or with an actual terrarium-style recreation of a full-fledged habitat, not to mention accommodate hundreds or thousands of people for their entire lifespans without them going mad from boredom and claustrophobia.

Sometimes, a Generation Ship doesn't ''have'' a decided destination -- it's an interstellar trade ship, connecting isolated colonies or installing the [[PortalNetwork Hyperspace Gateways]] that will allow FTL expansion and exploitation, in which case the populace are usually SpacePeople. Occasionally, the generation ship will arrive to discover that [[LightspeedLeapfrog someone developed an FTL drive while they were en route]] and the world they were going to colonize already has a few million people on it.

The possibility of this in RealLife brings a little FridgeLogic as to why, if a race can build a large craft capable of sustaining itself indefinitely, they would bother having it leave the solar system at all? There's plenty of room for it to sit in an orbit there for trade and to be near help for emergencies. [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools Still, being out far from help on an adventure makes for a good story.]]

** In ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' Annual #5, a generation ship was launched from Earth prior to its destruction in the hope of finding a new home. However, a warp field breach severely damaged the ship and the comparatively few survivors were forced to eke out a "pitiful, subsistence life." Over time, they split into two groups. One of the groups became known as the Unremembered, for reasons that they were lost to them. One of their number, [=AlyXa=], later learns that it is because they do not have access to a [[TransferableMemory memory transfer device]]. After 10,000 generations, the other group evolved into the Ratbats. Neither group had any concept of life beyond the worldship, the name of which had been long since forgotten.

** Janeway often wonders whether "Voyager" will become such a ship itself: the original return estimate is 70 years, after all. [[spoiler: they make it in seven]] Some fans consider that properly going down the "generation ship" route might have been more interesting, rather than resorting to occasional plot devices to throw them across chunks of space. Of course, the show would never have lasted for 70 years. It also might've become compared too closely with BattlestarGalactica.

If the laws of physics don't allow FasterThanLightTravel, it's going to take a long time to colonize the stars. If you can't get close enough to lightspeed to take advantage of TimeDilation, don't have the medical technology for functional {{immortality}}, and you don't want to resort to [[SleeperStarship suspended animation/hibernation]] or BrainUploading), no one starting the journey is going to see the destination. Their grandchildren might, or ''their'' grandchildren, or '''theirs'''. You get the idea.

If the laws of physics don't allow FasterThanLightTravel, it's going to take a long time to colonize the stars. If you can't get close enough to lightspeed to take advantage of TimeDilation, don't have the medical technology for functional {{immortality}}, and you don't want to resort to [[SleeperStarship suspended animation/hibernation]] or BrainUploading), no one starting the is going to see the destination. Their grandchildren might, or ''their'' grandchildren, or '''theirs'''. You get the idea.

* ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'' has this in the backstory: when the Hiigarans were exiled, the entire civilization was packed into a fleet of identical FTL-incapable generation ships that crossed half the galaxy on sublight until the last four or so reached Kharak. Some of them broken off and became the Kadeshi, a society who camped out in a nebula and gave everyone they met a choice: join or die (the ship is plundered and destroyed in both cases). By the time their distant siblings who made it to Kharak found them, the Kadeshi were religious fanatics who worshipped the nebula and talked in a CreepyMonotone. Oh, and according to the ExpandedUniverse, they were also {{Evil Albino}}s. One of the generation ships is still floating in the center of the nebula, unmanned and slowly spinning in place.

The possibility of this in RealLife brings a little FridgeLogic as to why, if a race can build a large craft capable of sustaining itself indefinitely, they would bother having it leave the solar system at all? There's plenty of room for it to sit in an orbit there for trade and to be near help for emergencies. [[TropesAreTools Still, being out far from help on an adventure makes for a good story.]]

* The title vessel in ''Literature/RendezvousWithRama'' superficially appears to be ''failed'' example of these in the original novel as there are no apparent inhabitants in the vessel. The characters speculate that all of its inhabitants died off during the vessel's hundred-thousand year journey through space, leaving some pre-programmed robot systems in operation, although the robots are biological in nature and are created ''denovo'' whenever needed and recycled when not needed so there is no reason to believe the 'inhabitants' are not also made-on-demand. The sequels reveal that they [[spoiler: aren't intended to be generation ships (as they can accelerate to relativistic speeds) for travel but are merely prowling the cosmos to find the perfect life forms.]]