Sci Fi novel read the summer of '86 in English -- features a crew of two men and woman on a spaceship

[manucito]

Not quite sure what the ship's name was, for some reason it Orion rings a bell.
Very basic plot the were running away from something. At some point it is mentioned three-way marriages were common.

 

[Suzecog]

There’s a three way marriage on a spaceship in Melissa Scott’s Silence Leigh trilogy. I think they were on the run, not sure as it’s such a long time since I read it, and the time fits too, I think it was published in the mid eighties. There was a most unusual means of space travel too if that rings any bells.

 

[SteveD]

There is a book called 'Star Colony' by Keith Laumer from 1981. There are many stories involving the Star Colony but one is about a small group of people, with only one female, escaping from Earth and travelling to the colony. Not sure if this is what you're looking for though.

 

[Ravensquawk]

But Sirius-ly, that ain't much to go on.

Which means that answers could be of any kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus or species, be scattershot, and come from any quarter.

So, "The Gold At the Starbow's End" by Frederik Pohl.

It doesn't have three-way marriages, specifically, but it does have the couples mixing and matching, even after one of them dies.
They were sent on the Constitution to a nonexistent planet. The premise for the hoax was quoted experiments in which children given two pieces of plywood all performed the same predictable task, but given only one, they were more creative. So, give these people nothing, and what might they invent?

But the mission's coming along just fine. The "personal relationships" keep on being just great. We've done a little experimental research there, too, that wasn't on the program, but it's all O.K.

And

What had gone wrong? They were his kids, hand-picked. there had been no hint of, for instance, hippiness in any of them....

I can remember a short story and an off-color limerick referring to three nonhuman genders, but again, that isn't the same as an Earth human three-way marriage, and again, the question ain't much to go on, so what the hey.

 

[Ray Zdybrow]

But Sirius-ly, that ain't much to go on.

Which means that answers could be of any kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus or species, be scattershot, and come from any quarter.

So, "The Gold At the Starbow's End" by Frederik Pohl.

It doesn't have three-way marriages, specifically, but it does have the couples mixing and matching, even after one of them dies.
They were sent on the Constitution to a nonexistent planet. The premise for the hoax was quoted experiments in which children given two pieces of plywood all performed the same predictable task, but given only one, they were more creative. So, give these people nothing, and what might they invent?


And


I can remember a short story and an off-color limerick referring to three nonhuman genders, but again, that isn't the same as an Earth human three-way marriage, and again, the question ain't much to go on, so what the hey.

Please post limerick.

 

[Ravensquawk]

Please post limerick.

I can do that from memory, after reading in a paper book before the internet, on which it doesn't seem to be now anyhow.

On Saturn the sexes are three,
Which is awkward, I think you'll agree,
For performing con brio,
You must have a trio,
And it even takes two for a pee.

Now, surely you know with no further wonder that that was the prolific Good Doctor with the mutton chops.
(As he was described in a story with him as a character in it, while he was still living. I don't remember the name of that story though.)
Who else!?

 

[Ravensquawk]

And the other short story is "Rule of Three" by Theodore Sturgeon.