Orphans of the Sky
- 128
- Pages
- about 2.5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Orphans of the Sky” is a short, inventive early vision of a generation ship, an ark bound for Proxima Centauri over many lifetimes. Robert A. Heinlein joins two novellas, “Universe” and “Common Sense”, and readers single out the strange world on board. Some readers object to how rarely women appear and how badly they are treated, and find the characters thin beside the ideas. It is best read as a piece of genre history.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Orphans of the Sky is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988), consisting of two parts: the novella "Universe" and its sequel, "Common Sense". "Universe" was republished alone in 1951 as a 10¢ Dell paperback book. The two novellas were first published together in book form in 1963. The work presents one of the earliest fictional depictions of a generation ship—an interstellar "ark" travelling at sub-light speeds and requiring many generations to reach a "nearby" star—in this case Proxima Centauri.
Reading order · Future History
Full order & progress →- Life-LineStart here
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7.67.6 / 10 - Orphans of the SkyThis book
7.67.6 / 10 - The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein
–Not ranked yet - The Past Through Tomorrow
–Not ranked yet - Time Enough for Love
7.67.6 / 10 - The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
7.27.2 / 10 - To Sail Beyond the Sunset
7.67.6 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.1 across 59 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 29% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.0 | 8 | 14% |
| Hardcover | 7.1 | 51 | 86% |
Frequently asked
How long is Orphans of the Sky?
It has 128 pages — shorter than 99% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Science fiction — with scores between 7.5 and 7.6, closest to this book.
