Search the Sky by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth

"Search the Sky" by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth is a satirical science fiction novel published in 1954. When a generation ship fails to contact six colonies, Ross embarks on a journey across the stars to investigate their fate. What he discovers is alarming: isolated human settlements have descended into bizarre, dysfunctional societies—from gerontocratic mockeries to oppressive matriarchies and planets of enforced conformity. Each world reveals humanity's capacity for strange degeneration when cut off from the broader human community. (This is an automatically generated summary.)