SFF ideas I love: Naturally intelligent ships
There are loads of artificially intelligent ships in sci-fi, like Breq (formerly the giant military ship Justice of Toren) in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, or the General Contact Unit Of Course I Still Love You in Iain M. Bank’s The Player of Games. But what about naturally intelligent ships, star- or otherwise?
The first book I ever read with a ship like that was Anne McCaffrey’s classic The Ship Who Sang. The titular ship, designated XH-834, is really the cyborg body of Helva, a woman who was born with severe physical disabilities and whose brain is the only part of her original body that could be saved. Ships like Helva were each partnered with a “Brawn”, a normal human crew member who was responsible for things like ground missions that the “Brain” couldn’t do.
The second naturally intelligent ship I can think of comes from Robin Hobb’s Ship of Magic. It’s a fantasy book instead of sci-fi, so this ship is the floaty kind instead of the flying kind, but it’s the same idea. Carved into the ship’s figurehead is a powerful and unpredictable woman named Vivacia, whose self-awareness comes from the magical properties of the special wood that her “liveship” body was fashioned from, as well as from the souls of those who have died on her decks.
I love the idea of naturally intelligent ships because it’s a great source of narrative tension. Both of the ships above are born into involuntary servitude. Helva is forced to work to pay back the exorbitant cost of her manufacture, and Vivacia can never truly be free, since she needs a large human crew to sail her. On the one hand, this one of the hoariest SFF clichés—whenever anyone creates an intelligence in SFF, somehow no one ever thinks to just hand them a citizenship card and say “Hey, have a great life!”
But on the other hand, having a character’s future be inherently uncertain gives them a compelling goal to work towards. And having them be natural instead of artificial intelligences probably helps the reader empathize with them more. Iain Banks’ books are swarming with fun AI ships, but they’re played more for snark than for pathos.
Both books are well worth a read. Hobb’s Ship of Magic is book four of a sprawling, interconnected sixteen-book series, and at first it seems like it’s pulling that fantasy universe off in a very unexpected direction. But if you stick with the series, Hobb makes it all work out, and it’s ultimately some of the most satisfying character-driven fantasy out there.
McCaffrey’s The Ship Who Sang is a fix-up of five novelettes, but it’s done with care, and it’s some of the author’s own favorite work. Usually people are more familiar with McCaffrey’s The Dragonriders of Pern series, and they may not be aware of her earlier work. But all of her books might have more similarities than I used to think. After all, if you can ride a dragon, wouldn’t that make them a kind of naturally intelligent ship too?