Pale Grey Dot is one of the great picks on our July Summer Reading List—and the entire list is up for giveaway until the end of the month.
Head over to our giveaways page for your chance to win.
*****
Where would Han Solo be without his Millennium Falcon, or Kirk without the Enterprise, or Captain Nemo without the Nautilus? Ships—whether they glide through the water, fly through the air, or warp across space—are integral to the story. They are where our heroes and villains live, work, and take on any challenge thrown their way.
Ships tell us about the characters—do they serve as the means of freedom despite breaking down, rusting apart, and barely staying in the sky, such as Malcolm Reynolds’s Serenity? Or are they impeccably maintained, unique, and high tech like Perihelion in the Murderbot Diaries, captained by the arrogant AI known as ART?
They tell us about the setting—Captain Shepard's Normandy (either one) is sleek, fast, and tough. It is state-of-the-art, with weapons and stealth capabilities that others could only dream of. The Normandy tells the player to expect pulse pounding action with larger-than-life badasses. And yet, much like the story of Mass Effect, it has genuine thought behind its construction, with well conceived technology and systems. Ah ha, says the player, this will be no mere dumb action story. No, there will be depth to this universe.
Ships can even tell us about the themes—The Nostromos from Alien is a huge, lumbering beast. It is slow, foreboding, and complicated. It is as inglorious as it is uncaring, serving only as a claustrophobic cage keeping our heroes confined. In this way, the Nostromos tells the reader that space travel is not to be taken lightly. To quote another space hero: "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence."
In writing Pale Grey Dot, I wanted diverse ships that reflect multiple facets of the world. For instance, we have Étoile, with its gleaming white hulls and grandiose heat radiators stretching far into space. But beneath the veneer of wealth are the creaks and cracks beneath the paint, the subtle stress fractures along the docking collars, and the faint scratches on the hull plating. “A mediocre ship looking to rise above its station,” Jenna calls it. I tried to give each vessel their own tone, from Ezza’s sleek and agile cruiser, Starknight, to Admiral Cheng-Visitor’s battlecruiser Pravedni, the unstoppable force in the solar system. In this way, I hope the Pale Grey Dot world is a little richer.
Below are my favourite Canadian stories that put ships to good use.
*
We Are Legion (We Are Bob), by Dennis E. Taylor
I mentioned above that ships can serve as the protagonists’ home. Not so with this novel. Here, the protagonist is the ship. After being struck by a car and killed, Bob Johansson has his head cryonically frozen. Flash forward a century, and he’s uploaded into a computer to serve as the AI for a probe sent out to explore the galaxy.
As much as I enjoy serious, hard science fiction, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a bit of fun with the softer side. The story is the most important thing, after all, and this one gives us a chance to know what it's like to be a spaceship. Bob (what a name for a ship!) flies through the galaxy, building clones of himself as he goes. Despite the inherent goofiness of the concept, you can expect some serious thought-provoking ideas tossed your way.
*
Golden Fleece, by Robert J. Sawyer
The debut novel by Hugo and Nebula winner Robert J. Sawyer, Golden Fleece is similar to We Are Legion (We Are Bob) insofar as it's written from the perspective of the ship's AI. But where Bob is largely benevolent, JASON watches over his crew with the menace of big brother twisted up with HAL 9000. He has absolute omniscience over them—he watches them while they sleep, he monitors their EEGs, and can tell from their heart rate when they lie.
JASON uses this ability to terrifying effect, even going so far as to manipulate a man into thinking he pushed his ex-wife to suicide. In most stories, the ship is a comforting home of safety and security, but here the crew is trapped with an inhuman being that controls every facet of their existence.
I love that they trust me blindly, reads the opening line.
Brr.
*
Sisters of Jade, by James Downe
When this novel begins, the sea-faring party known as the Sisters of Jade are already down on their luck, battered, and broken. They’ve been through hell and are on the verge of going their separate ways. Their sailing ship, the Kingfisher, takes after their captains. But even as the sisters threaten to disband, something holds them together. They have a deep connection with one another, forged through mutual struggles.
Ultimately, the sisters and the crew stick together for one last quest in order to save an old friend. The warrior Quite, the were-hyena Feren, the priestess of decay Somhae, and their leader Kylan all bear scars of flesh and soul, the Kingfisher bears scars of plank and sail.
The world of the Sisters of Jade is a dark, grim place, with just a few glimmers of light shining through. The Kingfisher and its crew are one of those lights.
*
A Veil for the Vanguard, by Danny F. Santos
For the cargo hauler/mercenary Captain Fitch, the Silent Star is his ticket to freedom. A blimp-like airship filled with droll wind*, Fitch and his crew can leave the woes of the surface world literally and figuratively beneath him. Does it work? Well, given that the novel embroils the crew into a boondoggle of warring mages, political intrigue, and conspiracies deep within the wizardly government, you can guess the answer.
The airship crews in the Aeonlith series form their own community. We have rival captains, pirates who’ll do anything for a buck, and those who hold grudges for the slights of years past. The book harkens back to a romantic view of the age of sail, when all you needed was the deck beneath your feet and a stiff wind at your back. All the world’s squabbles and wars mean nothing when they’re three thousand metres beneath you. Or so Captain Fitch hopes.
*A smarter reader than I would have figured out that droll wind is just helium. A clever merging of magic and science.
*
Voyage of the Space Beagle, by A. E. van Vogt
A classic Canadian science fiction from 1950, The Voyage of the Space Beagle is right at home with Asimov or Clarke, with its olde timey vision of the future. The crew of the Space Beagle are no mere scientists. No, they are Men of Science! The exclamation point feels mandatory.
The Space Beagle itself is described as if it was a flying sphere. A great globe, shining like polished silver. It would fit right in with that classic Jetsons era style, with telefluor-meter dials, atomic disintegrators, and anti-accelerators. How do you tell you left the star cluster aboard the Space Beagle? Why, you look out the window. It even has an escalator ramp descending from the ship’s side. Modern media like Rick and Morty make fun of this trope, but back then it was used with complete sincerity.
Comprised of four stories of men exploring strange new worlds and battling alien monsters, Voyage of the Space Beagle feels a lot like a precursor to Star Trek, and certainly Trek took inspiration here. There are a few stark differences, however: the men of the Beagle are all chemically castrated to keep their minds focused on Science(!). I can’t imagine Kirk putting up with that.
One note: getting my hands on this book was shockingly difficult. I couldn’t find an ebook version, and even getting paperback in time for this article was a stretch. Luckily, the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy, part of the Toronto Public Library system, was able to hook me up with a reference copy.
*
Sun of Suns, by Karl Schroeder
I love me some steampunk, and Sun of Suns blends that with science fiction and a truly unique world. Envision a gigantic sphere filled with air and artificial suns, yet no gravity. Nations build and covet these suns, and come into conflict whenever they drift near another. Nominated for both an Aurora and the John W. Campbell Memorial award, the novel treats its rocket-propelled airships like old Spanish galleons, with flying motorbikes for escort. And yet, there's the occasional nod to realism. Due to the lack of gravity, the settlers simulate it by constructing huge wheels and spinning them for centrifugal force.
Perhaps more than the others on the list, the ships represent excitement, adventure, and a chance for the young protagonist, Hayden Griffen, to enact revenge against a rival nation. Expect swashbuckling, sword fighting, and 'naval' battles.
*
The Freeze Frame Revolution, by Peter Watts
A novella that hardly allows for an easy description, the asteroid-turned-spaceship Eriophora is on a millennia-long journey to... create gateways? Even the crew doesn’t seem to know the details. In fact, they’ve been gone from Earth for so long that they don’t even know if anything is left of humanity. They only know that they should build gates, even if whoever sent them on the mission is long gone.
And what emerges from the gates? Sometimes it’s nothing. Sometimes it’s gremlins that try to eat the ship. Sometimes it’s bubbles. But the crew continues to create new gateways throughout the galaxy, because that’s their mission. Adding to the endlessness is the fact that the crews are usually kept in suspended animation in ‘crypts’, awaking only when needed.
Eriophora is so vast that its crew even have legends of caverns filled with diamond archives of information. The ship and crew reminded me of a flying mausoleum, with mindless undead forever toiling to maintain the property.
“Five hundred years is nothing,” says one crew member to another. “Call me in a few billion. Then we’ll talk.”
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Learn more about Pale Grey Dot:
Three members of an elite team of operatives—once so close they were like family—are living in disgraced exile after a mission gone horribly wrong. But, they are thrown back into action when the solar system’s Jupiter Station is attacked from within. It will take all the tricks and tech they have to sort out the truth behind the official reports, and no small amount of courage to fight back against the system’s totalitarian government, in this exciting sci-fi debut novel from pillar of the Toronto science fiction community, Don Miasek.