Target Generation
Simak, Clifford. "Target Generation" (vt "Spacebred Generations") Science Fiction Plus August 1953. Collected Strangers in the Universe. New York: Simon, 1956. New York: Berkley, 1957. London: Faber, 1958. See Internet Speculative Fiction Database for additional collections and reprints, plus translations.[1]
"Target Generation" features a rather literal "mother" ship, serving as "a womb from which the [human] race could be renewed" (52 of Berkley edn.; quoted and discussed by Wolfe 65).[[2]] Cf. V. Vinge's "Long Shot," and J. Williamson's Manseed; see also Heinlein's Universe.
Discussed on the serious fan site SCIENCE FICTION AND OTHER SUSPECT RUMINATIONS: Reviews of Vintage Science Fiction (1950s to mid-1980s).[3]
The story itself posits that religion is required [... for] the generation ship crew in order to reach its destination. [...] Simak’s vision is a serious rumination, with sympathetic characters, on the nature of laws and the origin of religion.
Jon and Mary — Simak deliberately chooses Christian names — live as their ancestors have lived for hundreds and hundreds of years in a tiny cubicle, decked out with pastoral Holy Images, on the Ship. In pre-Copernican fashion, the Ship is conceived as the center of the universe. A crisis unfolds as a series of signs that physically realign the cubicles and cause the stars to stop moving [...] suggest that an End is [... nigh].
RDE, initial; and finishing 25Ap21