Notes
Orphans of the Sky, a Future History fix-up novel by Robert A. Heinlein, bringing together Universe (first published in Astounding, May 1941) and its sequel Common Sense (first published in Astounding, October 1941).

The image opposite and the blurb below are from the 1969 printing of the Mayflower Paperbacks edition. Cover illustrator unknown.

Publisher’s Blurb – Lower Cover
"The Proxima Centauri Expedition, sponsored by the Jordan Foundation in 2119, was the first recorded attempt to reach the nearer stars of the galaxy. Whatever its unhappy fate we can only conjecture..."

The scene is set for Heinlein’s amazing science fiction adventure about an entire society hurtling through space, and the strange ways in which a new world is born in the sky. A disturbing book, too, which makes us wonder whether our own view of the universe can be a final truth.