Colony was the first novel written by Rob Grant outside the Red Dwarf series. First published in 2000 by Viking Press in the United Kingdom it stays within the comedy, science fiction genre. The narrative is set on a spaceship sent on a voyage to colonise another planet, since Earth has been rendered uninhabitable. The mission is set to take numerous generations. Ten generations into the voyage, however, the crew's mental abilities have all been severely reduced, setting the events of the novel in motion.
Plot summary
The story starts on Earth in the future. Global warming and overpopulation has caused an imminent apocalypse. The hope for the survival of the human race is a spaceship called the Willflower, which will take a small number of the world's best minds on a journey to colonize another planet. Eddie O'Hare, the protagonist, is not one of them. He is deep in debt due to his computer having mysteriously stolen several million dollars online, then sending it to an unknown location. He decides to gamble what money he has left in the hope of getting enough to pay back the debts. On his way to the casino, he meets a pink-socked assassin whom he fears may have been sent to kill him. Fortunately, it seems Eddie is not the man's current target.
When gambling the last of his money, Eddie wins — thanks to mimicking the gambling decisions of a man who looks uncannily like himself — but the casino closes down after losing all its money to the other man. Eddie discovers that this man, Charles Perry Gordon, is due to leave on the Willflower but doesn't want to go now that he was won such a vast fortune. Ramifications for the rest of his family mean Gordon cannot refuse to leave, so he offers Eddie his onboard credentials to go in his place. Eddie successfully smuggles himself onto the ship. As Gordon's job is the community planner, Eddie reads the plans to learn more about his job and discovers that the man he is replacing has enforced a fascist, totalitarian system: crew members are paired for life before they are even born, and jobs — even unpleasant ones such as prostitution — are inherited. However, shortly after the ship sets off he is murdered by an unknown assailant.
The story then jumps forward several generations. Eddie is revived as a cyborg with only his head and spinal column remaining of his original body, and trapped forever in a jar of green slime. (Even worse, the nerve endings are incorrectly wired, so that, for example, he moves his right arm when trying to move his left foot.) He finds himself on a ship full of idiots and that is something wrong with the ship; all but one of its engines are gone and it has only 20% of its maneuvering thrusters. The ship needs to land soon, but only three planets are available: Thrrrppp, which is the most habitable but with no way for the ship to enter orbit; Penis, which the ship has a 50% chance of docking with but is covered in volcanoes; and Panties, which is totally hostile but has a 90% chance of docking. As the only intelligent life form on board it is up to him to find out what is happening.
As he explores the ship, he meets more of the ship's mentally diminished crew, none of whom have even the slightest ability to perform their jobs. He is puzzled by this as well as the fact that the ship, which has been shown to be able to self-repair if it takes damage, has not done so. The ship is also on a collision course with a massive gas giant that does not appear on the radar system. Eddie decides to cause the nuclear-powered escape pod to self-destruct in the hope that the explosion will force the ship towards planet Thrrrppp. This fails when the less-than-moral priest steals the pod — accompanied by some of the ship's prostitutes to help him 'rebuild' human society — and destroys the remaining engines in the process.