If you want to explore the history of generation ships in science fiction, you might start with a story by Don Wilcox. Writing in 1940 for Amazing Stories, Wilcox conceived a slick plot device in his “The Voyage that Lasted 600 Years,” a single individual who comes out of hibernation once every century to see how the rest of the initial crew of 33 is handling their job of keeping the species going. Only room for one hibernation chamber, and this means our man becomes a window into social change aboard the craft. The breakdown he witnesses forces him into drastic action to save the mission.
In a plot twist that anticipates A. E. van Vogt’s far superior “Far Centaurus,” Wilcox has his ragged band finally arrive after many generations at destination, only to find that a faster technology has long ago planted a colony there. Granted, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had written about generation ships before Wilcox, and in a far more learned way. Fictional precedents like Laurence Manning’s “The Living Galaxy” (Wonder Stories, 1934) and Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker (1937) imagined entire worlds as stellar wanderers, but we can give Wilcox a nod for getting the concept of generations living and dying aboard a constructed craft in front of the public. Heinlein’s “Universe” wouldn’t appear until 1941, and the generation ship was soon to become a science fiction trope.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2025/08/12/chrysalis-designing-a-generation-ship/