I read this book years ago. I remember being impressed by it. Humanity's search for a different a home on a different planet. It was so different from other books I'd read about colonizing another planet. Usually these books focus on the process of colonization after having found a suitable planet.
This book is strictly about the search. The trial and error. The hope of finding a planet suitable from afar, then realizing once they've landed that humanity may be able to survive, but it would never flourish there. So the search continues.
It was fascinating book. ( )

I was looking for a sci-fi novel along the lines of the original Star Trek, and this kind of fit the bill (especially the year-captain, who 'moves around the ship like a cat, and knows every hidden corner of it better even than the man who designed it', which totally reminded me of Captain Kirk, but I might be obsessed).

Anyway, I enjoyed the characters and the insular setting, but felt that the story should probably have been longer. The fifty-strong crew of a spaceship are sent into 'no-space' to scout out a new home world, because Earth has become 'one vast pleasant suburb of well-to-do elderly childless folks'. We meet a handful of the crew, including the year-captain who is never named, and Noelle, a blind woman seemingly on board for the purpose of communicating with the folks at home via a telepathic bond with her twin sister (sounds bizarre, but Silverberg makes it work). Everyone spends bides their time playing Go and sleeping together, while waiting for new planets to survey in the hope of settling a new civilisation in outer space. Strangely though, what should have been the dullest part of the book was actually the most interesting - getting to know the characters from their day to day lives. The final chapters felt rushed in comparison, but rather poetic all the same. ( )