Name: Rite of Passage
ISBN: 9780978907822

Alexei Panshin

In 2198 man lives precariously on hastily-established colony worlds and in seven giant starships. Mia Haveros ship tests its children by casting them out to live or die in a month of Trial in the hostile wilds of a colony world. Her trial is fast approaching and she must learn not only the skills that will keep her alive but the deeper courage to face herself and her world.

Rite of Passage

Bryan Alexander

A very pleasant young adult novel wrapped in science fiction critique.

Like a classic YA story, we follow a protagonist (Mia Havero) as she moves through adolescence towards adulthood. She meets various challenges, struggles with family and love, then grows up.

It's also a recognizable science fiction world. We have a generation ship filled with advanced humans who ply the starways. The setting also includes a space opera framework, with a destroyed Earth and low-technology colony planets.

It's a rich text to think about in terms of science fiction history, especially given the period of its composition. The novel is definitely a response to Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky, a 1960s liberal revision with progressive attitudes towards child-reading, pedagogy, sexuality, and family structure. The devastating finale echoes another Heinlein book, Have Spacesuit Will Travel.

About the ending: (view spoiler)[the climax is nearly dystopian, as the Ship agrees to destroy a planet of humans. Mia contributes to this process, and fails to stop it. She ends with no power, and her father triumphant. Maybe Mia and her boyfriend will be able to change society later on, but not in this book. (hide spoiler)]

Rite of Passage

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