"Top 10 spaceships in fiction" Topic

"Some of my earliest memories are of watching Star Trek in the early 1970s, on my grandparents' black and white TV, and then getting caught up as a schoolboy in all the hype surrounding the release of Star Wars in 1977. But while movie and TV spaceships such as the USS Enterprise and Millennium Falcon – and even the Red Dwarf – are firmly established as part of our shared cultural vocabulary, the worlds of printed fiction contain many other ships that are every bit as iconic.

In science fiction, spaceships are more than vehicles. They're often characters in their own right, whether they can think for themselves or not. One of the lead characters in my new book Embers of War is the sentient warship Trouble Dog. Shaken by the horrors of war, she has chosen to resign her position in her fleet.

Over the years, spaceships in fiction have come in many forms and guises. These are some of my favourites…"
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Amicalement
Armand

SDF-1 Macross

Red Dwarf---Starbug

Good grief! The Reviewer not only begins by describing his own book, but ends the article with an advert. Even for the Guardian, that's low.
So let's concede the Enterprise and the Millenium Falcon, and talk real SF ships out of real SF books:
From Doc Smith's Lensman series:
the DAUNTLESSs--the original stealth spacecraft--and
the DIRECTRIX--the first command and control ship.
From James H. Schmitz Witches of Karres,
the VENTURE
Out of Heinlein,
the ROLLING STONE and the Jordan Foundation's generation ship,
the VANGUARD from Orphans of the Sky.
David Drake's great
PRINCESS CECILLE from his Mundy and Leary novels.
Serving Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League
the MUDDLIN' THROUGH.

Honorable mention to the ROGER BURLINGAME from David Gerrold's Yesterday's Children and to the ship I can't find on short notice, but is the setting for Frank Eric Russel's "Allamagoosa." (MUCH harder to find the right anthology on short notice.)

Warships, exploration vessels, commercial transports and passenger ships. But on TMP of all places, I missed a troop transport. Gentlemen, The ROGER YOUNG!

And for real luxury travel,
THE RIVER OF STARS.

And the ship in "Allamagoosa" was the BUSTLER. (Never, but never, lose your offog prior to a property book inspection.)

If no one else picks up on this, it's going to be a funny-looking poll.

Lucas Trask Nemesis in space Viking

Let's not forget YAMATO.

Does Oumuamua count, specially among those who might be thinking that it's some sort of ship? :)

Dan
TMP link

No Discovery?

Good choises!…

Amicalement
Armand

The article is restricted to spaceships in printed fiction (novels, short stories, etc.). Alas, that rules out Serenity and the Heart of Gold.
So going with the premise:

King David's Spaceship from the novel of the same name. Yes, it's a one-shot deal, but it is the reason for the plot.

The "Cavorite" powered spaceship in H.G. Well's The First Men in the Moon.

The lunar rocketship from the Grand Duchy of Fenwick in The Mouse That Went to the Moon.

The USS Merrimack from R.E.Meluch's Tour of the Merrimack series.

The Essenay, especially its AI personality "Uncle Virgil," from the Dragonback series by Timothy Zahn.

The Post-Dated Check Loan from Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary: It's hard to beat a spacecraft that starts out as a "haunted" dreadnought with a murdered crew and a homicidally insane AI that then becomes a (mostly) beneficial quasi-omniscient/omnipotent koala bear. (Yes, koala bear). The Toughs have had (and lost) a lot of ships, but this one remains my favorite.

Ah. Perhaps worth mentioning Muddlehead, the ship's computer of MUDDLIN' THROUGH? (I don't think the term "artificial intelligence" was in common use when Anderson wrote The Trouble Twisters.) In an intensely capitalistic system, Muddlehead figures out how to get itself some start-up capital, and goes looking for upgrades. I always liked Muddlehead, a machine ahead of its time.

And right on the edge of "ship's computer" there's HELVA from Ann McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang. (When this becomes a poll, please note that I have capitalized each ship name, and I am not joking in any case.)

TOS USS Enterprise
Space 1999 Eagle
2001 Space Odyssey Discovery
Blakes 7 Liberator
Millennium Falcon
And while technically not a space ship Thunderbird 2

Adding to the tackiness. Did anyone else find the ships mentioned in the article to be an odd selection? By an incredible coincidence, Every spacecraft mentioned in that Guardian article is from a book for sale in the Guardian's bookshop.

Harder and harder to sort out "journalism" from advertising these days.

I don't recall whether the ship was ever named but the starship from the novel The Ship Who sang should be included.

Space Battleship Yamato. Both the original and 2199. One of the very few cases where the remake managed to slightly surpass the original.

Still haven't had a chance to see the latest series of Yamato films.

The Borg big box ship was so counter to what you had come to expect in science fiction that it was "outside the box."

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

The USS Rodger Young from Starship Troopers

Yamato is a cool ship and show despite its Japanese nationalistic undertones.