Nehemiah Scudder is seeming to be not so far fetched:

Ken MacLeod writes of the spread of creationism and why in this very good post:

http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2008/03/refloating-ark.html

The Travellers by Mark Harrison

One of my favourite games is Traveller by Marc Miller.
Back in the 1980's "White Dwarf" magazine ran a comic strip about the adventures of a typical bunch of characters called "The Travellers."

http://www.2000ad.org/markus/travellers/

It does give a good sense of a typical game I think.