24. Harry Harrison, Captive Universe

The story begins in a typical Aztec village set in a river valley where the people are ruled by an almost despotic priesthood and mortified by the powers of their various gods.  Very quickly the author focuses in on Chimal, a resident of the village, who is clearly a little different than the other villagers.  He is the product of an illicit liaison between one of the villagers and another man from a small village located across the river.  Chimal is unsatisfied with the situation in the village, he does not respect the religious structure and he feels a certain claustrophobia and is constantly looking for different ways out of the village.  One day he is called in front of the higher priests on some minor infraction and the head priest has a heart attack and eventually dies.  The villagers believe that this is Chimal's fault and they first imprison him and then, after his mother breaks him out of jail, they launch a valley wide manhunt for him.  In his efforts to get away he finds a door that leads into a cave which is very different feeling than the rest of the valley.

Chimal has discovered a large network of tunnels and caves populated by humanoids who are at once futuristic and backwards.  The job of the people who live and work in these tunnels is to monitor and take care of the Aztec residents of the valley.  It turns out that the valley isn't located on earth rather the valley is a false environment built into a carved out asteroid.  A very long time ago, the leader of one of the country's on earth decided that it would be a good idea to launch a space mission to a different solar system.  After a lot of research they concluded that they could not build a space ship that could transport people over to a nearby solar system in anything less than 1,000 years.  So, they carved out the inside of a nearby asteroid, created this valley and populated it with two backwards Aztec tribes who wouldn't know any better.  Then, they constructed an elaborate network of tunnels, ventilation systems, weather patterns, and animal life operated by a staff of Watchmen and Overseers who lived in these tunnels to watch over and care for the residents of the valley.

In addition, before moving the Aztecs over the creators of the spaceship manipulated their DNA such that the progeny of a combination of a member of one Aztec village with a member of the other Aztec village would result in a genius child.  The idea here was that it would take the spaceship 1,000 years to get to the galaxy but once it neared the point of arrival the two villages would be allowed to mate which would result in very smart people who could then make sense of what the hell they were doing there.  Chimal was the first such child.

Once inside the cave structure Chimal quickly discovers that the people here are technologically advanced but have been genetically neutered in such a way that they can only comprehend one job.  For example, there's one guy who can figure out the ventilation systems and once he's gone nobody else can or has the means to learn what to do quickly.  Chimal also discovers that this lack of intelligence has resulted in the leadership of this group unilaterally deciding that the original planets that they were headed towards were not good destinations and setting a new course to some other, far more distant, planet.

Chimal spends his time trying to correct the ship's course and trying to overthrow the ship's order so that he can lift the blanket of ignorance that is shrouding his people.  The book has an imaginative theme and the author does a good job presenting it but I wasn't blown away.