And a follow up question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Are there any cozies set in generation starships? If not, why not?

Comments

[rosefox]

Worth noting, though, that many cozy mysteries take place in e.g. a snowbound country inn, which will presumably be a smaller and less mobile population than that of a generation ship.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

This is what I thought; the generation starship itself is too large for a proper cozy mystery. You'd need some way to keep the characters isolated from the rest of the starship. On the other hand, a smaller spaceship could be just right.

There will be any number of times when, as folks move around a single star system, that there's a dozen or so people off in a literally airtight can, with absolutely no way for anyone to arrive or leave and with their schedule both fixed and well known.

There are a few SF mysteries (Larry Niven, mentioned below, wrote about why writing a good SF mystery is hard), but cozies are a rarer subtype...

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Depends on the size of the generation ship, the crew and th pool of suspects. There's a good cozy subplot in The Other People by Ben Aaronovitch... It's a Doctor Who meets the culture rip off where a drone is killed in a Dyson sphere right under the nose of the sphere's mind....

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

This is what I thought; the generation starship itself is too large for a proper cozy mystery. You'd need some way to keep the characters isolated from the rest of the starship.

But see a comment below, about St. Mary Mead. What this flashes to me, is a shock/horror medium length story from mid-century. The bulk of the story is in an isolated part of the starship, cf St. Mary Mead. Communication from the larger ship community, ie Scotland Yard, is fragmentary. Everyone knows they are on a generation ship, and there are plenty of small clues that the larger community isn't Kansas, nor perhaps was ever meant to be. Perhaps SMM has always been culturally isolated, a pocket for a group cosyily familiar to the reader (perhaps SMM types themselves).

Then when the larger community law enforcement does break through the isolation, it turns out that its standards are not only not Kansas, but much much worse.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

There were a whole lot of those domes on Earthship Ark in The Starlost.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

That would depend on the generation ship. Most of the country Inn type mysteries rely on strangers and suspicion. I am intrigued with the concept of everybody knowing everybody else...

I am minded that there were quite a few Cabot Cove bottle episodes of Murder She Wrote including one where the killer was the recurring character of the sherif played by the great John Astin.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

John Astin played the mayor. Tom Bosley played the (first) sherriff.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Ah. Damn you faulty memory and damn me for not checking Google first. I thought he was sherif when he did the murder? Never mind, seriously not important...

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Murder on the Orient Express takes place in, essentially, just the one train carriage.