We’ve personified ships for a long time. They’re gendered female in English and the Latin languages, but male in Russian. This is part grammatical gender, but also part superstition – hence the lingering in English, which has dropped most grammatical gender.

(I also just came across something where the captain of the Bismarck called the ship he…although I can’t 100% confirm this).

When you add in really sophisticated computers, something inevitable happens.

We start writing about sentient starships.

So how about we meet a few of them.

The First Sentient Starship

Usually five minutes of research shows me the first appearance of a trope. Not this time! Even the Starship Wiki is singularly unhelpful.

From my own knowledge, I actually thought it was Helga from The Ship Who Sang, which was published in 1969.

Goodreads, however, pointed me to Herbert’s Destination: Void, where a colony ship’s crew try to make their ship sentient after the original controlling intelligence goes nuts. Or something. I’ve never cared much for Herbert, so I haven’t read it. 1966.

Both of these look awfully recent. Surely there’s something in the early years of Amazing? Heinlein made his moon base sentient, but wasn’t big on starships in most of his work, and Starship Troopers uses the mystique of the pilot trope (as does Star Wars, which is why we don’t see drone Tie fighters even though they would make a huge amount of sense).

I’m going to say there has to be something in there and I don’t have the encyclopedic knowledge of the pulp era to find it. Which sucks. (Now I need to do one on the mystique of the pilot and the Right Stuff, don’t I).

The Ship Who Sang

…and her siblings. The first book was published in 1969. The most recent book in the series was just published, written by Veronica Giguere and Mercedes Lackey. It’s number 8, which means I am short a few.

This was a pre-computer take on the sentient starship and is hugely controversial. Some disability advocates think it’s awesome, some think it’s hideous.

Helga is profoundly disabled, and permanently installed as the brain of a ship, partnered with a human “brawn” (which doesn’t imply they’re stupid, only that they’re doing all the physical stuff).

It does have some problematic disability elements…disability as superpower? Issues with consent. But it also stands out as a very unique implementation of the trope. I suspect that McCaffrey didn’t think that an entity that wasn’t basically human could be involved in romance. I disagree. (And McCaffrey struggled to write anything without a romance ;)).

Discovery

Star Trek: “We tried sentient starships. It went very badly.” The episode is “The Ultimate Computer,” and is a pretty cliché AI gone bad story.

Because of this, Discovery is the first Star Trek show to feature a sentient starship. Zora, the AI occupying Discovery’s mainframe is illegal and shouldn’t exist, but she’s also a living being who has rights.

We see two other sentient Ais in Star Trek, Data and the Doctor, and its implied that while sentient Ais are rare they exist, and in “The Measure of a Man,” Data gains full legal rights. This is extended to Zora, who’s allowed to exist, stay on the ship (The Discovery is her body), and commissioned as an officer.

Honestly, the entire plotline reflects growth in the portrayal of sentient AI in science fiction.

Andromeda

I’ve never actually watched this show and should fix that, but Gene Roddenberry took a very different approach to AI in Andromeda. In “The Ultimate Computer,” AI that becomes too human is bad.

In Andromeda, the ship’s AI, Rommie, is a significant character and a member of the crew.

Again, I haven’t got around to watching it yet, which I really should, even if it does have Kevin Sorbo in it.

Rommie has an android avatar, perhaps so the actor has more to do than voice work.

The Imperial Radch

Yet another very different approach to the trope. In this case, we have a sentient ex-starship, with the AI stuck in a human body. The Radch builds ships that rely on auxiliaries, which are humans who have had their personality wiped so they can act as drones. Shudder.

Yeah, it’s not a pretty situation, and there’s one book which goes into the remaining ships, after auxiliaries are ruled illegal, trying to find alternatives so they have a supply of bodies as avatars. Simple androids, apparently, won’t work here.

Despite that, Breq is a quite sympathetic character. It’s not, after all, her fault that she was built that way. And you have to feel a bit sorry for somebody who used to be a starship.

Asshole Research Transport

Pardon my language, but it has to be in here. Murderbot is one of my favorite fictional Ais, but its friend, Peri, also known as ART or Asshole Research Transport is pretty cool too. And they have an amazing…I’m not sure whether I would call their relationship queerplatonic or the older romantic friendship. Either way, we do get a courtship narrative even if the two people involved have neither the capability nor the interest to get intimate (Murderbot actually turns down having genitals added. Ahem).

I love Peri. Peri is a great foil to Murderbot. It can operate without a crew, but it absolutely prefers to have one on board.

Both characters exist in a world where sentient Ais exist…and where they are often enslaved, which is an issue that comes up most starkly in Star Wars.

The TARDIS

Okay, so I am 100% including the TARDIS and not just because of “The Doctor’s Wife” (Which unfortunately holds a sour note now after it turned out to have been written by a serial sexual predator).

It’s implied many times in the series that the TARDIS has something of a mind of her own. (I hate when the TARDIS is called “it” after it was established that she is sentient and if she has a gender it’s definitely female.

She may not be able to communicate in words, but she definitely communicates in her own way, whether it’s through the Cloister Bell (which is triggered so randomly one has to assume there’s some volition) or through the way she supports the Doctor and his Companions.

I actually have a theory that its not the Doctor who’s the trouble magnet…just saying.

So, there’s my cool examples. Anyone got any more to share? I know there are lots and lots.

As a trope, it takes “setting as character” to another level and personally I find it thoroughly enjoyable.

(In my own work, there’s Alvi in the Council series and Mavra in the short stories “Song of Starlight” and “Foundling”).