“What is conscience?” the voice asks.
…
“The willingness to sacrifice for a greater good,” I say.
“Sacrifice what?”
“Dreams. Plans. Personal stuff.”

Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear

Warning: spoilers inherent in this

Greg Bear’s Hull Zero Three is science fiction at its best: it is shaped by big ideas, is filled with technical puzzles, and asks questions about the future of humankind as well as the future of humanity (by “humankind” I mean the trajectory of DNA that includes our species; by “humanity,” the moral and emotional components that have been carried along with that DNA for the last 50,000 years or so). It may be a little thin in characterization–like medieval and Renaissance allegory (and this book has definite echoes of “A Pilgrim’s Progress”), its characters carry its ideas more than their own personalities. But Bear manages to keep the story interesting by allowing it unfold slowly, with much confusion and misinformation along the way.

Hull Zero Three takes place on Ship, a spacecraft traveling far from Earth in search of a new home for its human cargo. Ship’s origins are unclear: there are hints that Earth has become uninhabitable, that there are many such ships, that the architects of Ship had some nefarious plans. The past is muddied by the false memories that have been planted in the characters’ brains, apparently modified according to the needs of Ship’s mission. Indeed, Ship seems designed to adjust its cargo’s composition according to the mission’s situation, creating a wide range of humanoid beings suited to the conditions of deep space, or landing on an uninhabited planet, or–rather chillingly–taking over an inhabited planet by eliminating its native life.

Something has gone terribly wrong, though, and Ship has been riven by factions. What the factions are, and what the consequences of this civil war might be, unfolds slowly through the eyes of a Teacher clone who has been awakened in a frozen, incredibly dangerous part of the ship, by a strange little girl who wants to bring him to Mother. This Teacher–who remains nameless through the first two-thirds of the book–meets monsters, gathers clues, and eventually finds other creatures who have been awakened to a mysterious mission.

The Teacher’s journey reminded me a bit of a first-person video game: he (or other persons generated from his template) have tried, and failed, at this mission before. There is a feeling of repetition and déjà vu throughout the first part of the book: Teacher has to solve puzzles to overcome obstacles, has to learn to read the subtle cues of the changes in gravity and temperature, and discovers the collected knowledge of his other “selves” in a coded notebook. Each successive incarnation has moved a little further in this “game,” often leaving behind grisly reminders of failure that the Teacher finds along the way.

The big moral quandary that Hull Zero Three presents is that of humankind vs. humanity. The mission of Ship seems to be to spread the human species across the galaxy, whatever the cost: while it is capable of creating humans we would recognize on our current Earth, it can also create monsters capable of ruthless and efficient extermination. More troubling than its monsters, though, are its lies: the Teacher clones in particular not only have lies packed into their memories that include visions of a bucolic home Earth, but also are designed to present lies, to be the vessel of propaganda that can justify extermination. The civil war on the ship appears to have been sparked by dissension about the mission, with a part of the system bent on continuing to a planet that can be made ready for humankind only by wholesale slaughter and another by a faction more than simply queasy about this prospect. Where the strange band that must make its way to Hull Zero Three fits in this conflict, and how they come to choose a side, is the moral heart of the novel.