I’ve asked the same question in r/suggestmeabook. But I only get Space Ship books in the answers.
Can anyone suggest books that are NOT sentient space ships?
I mentioned Robot Dragon because I also want something similar to The Iron Dragon’s Daughter series. But it’s just an example.
‘Eversion’ by Alastair Reynolds includes a medical artificial intelligence, though the parts where the narrative is from a nonhuman perspective are more towards the end.
‘We Are Legion (We Are Bob)’ by Denis E. Taylor, has what would probably be defined as a sentient space ship, but I’m including it here because while it is a vessel that travels through space, the vast majority of the narrative seems to treat it as a non-inhabitable space-bound probe/3D printer that is capable of self-replication, which might be of interest to you.
Are you looking more for works written from truly non-human perspectives? (the ‘Uplift’ Trilogies by David Brin, the ‘Children of Time’ series by Adrian Tchaikovsky, or the the ‘zones of thought’ series by Vernor Vinge might be of interest to you. Though both are part of a space opera series) Are you looking more for something about a single artificial protagonist that is not necessarily explicitly a vehicle (The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells might be a good fit.)
If not, I am struggling to think of a book that involves a vehicle-based artificial intelligence that is speculative fiction, but doesn’t qualify as a space opera, or even involve a starship. Would you be willing to talk about what it is about those specific story archetypes that interests you? we might be able to find something that at least scratches the same sort of itch. (Depending on your perspective, I could recommend some fantasy books involving sentient giant spiders, intelligent swords, or worlds where every object has a sapient spirit that can talk and act on its own.)
That was posted by our Reddit crossposting bot, so the OP on Reddit won’t see your response. But I appreciate you writing it nonetheless, as responding to these crossposts may lead to interesting discussion here on these posts.
Yeah… I realized that as I went to answer another question and saw it was also by zambonibot. In spite of that, I had a lovely time combing through my recent reads for things that might qualify.
