The Ballad of Beta-2 is a 1965 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as "Chip" is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society.His science fiction novels include Babel-17, The Einstein...

The book was originally published as Ace Double M-121, together with Alpha Yes, Terra No! by Emil Petaja

Emil Petaja

Emil Petaja was an American science fiction and fantasy writer whose career spanned seven decades. He was the author of 13 published novels, nearly 150 short stories, numerous poems, and a handful of books and articles on various subjects...

. The first stand alone edition was published in 1971.
In 1977 a corrected edition came out, in a hardcover edition published by Gregg Press

Gregg Press

Gregg Press was founded about 1965 by Charles Gregg in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey to distribute in the United States the antiquarian reprints published in the UK by Gregg Press International....

 with an introduction by Marilyn Hacker

Marilyn Hacker

Marilyn Hacker is an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English at the City College of New York....

.

Plot

The story is about the history of an ill-fated multi-generational interstellar expedition

Generation ship

A generation ship is a hypothetical type of interstellar ark starship that travels across great distances between stars at a speed much slower than the speed of light...

of discovery. By the time the spaceship has arrived at the destination star system, the descendants are incapable and uninterested in settling the system's planets, and continue to live in the spaceship as an obscure backwater culture isolated from broader human history.

A quote from the ballad written for the book: