What are your favorite spaceships from science fiction shows, movies, games, comics, anime or anything?
The Swordfish from Cowboy Bebop is probably my top favorite. I like the idea of small compact ships meant for a single person and going fast.
For that same reason I love the Razorback from The Expanse. Except the engine to ship ratio in this universe probably makes more sense realistically. The cockpit 360 swivel system is also really clever.
The Outlaw Star from… Outlaw Star is not a small ship. I just like it because it looks cool despite its goofy unrealistic grapple arms that hold weapons.
Moya from Farscape. Creepy, organic, but strangely lived in. Also very temperamental.
Agreed. The living ships are my favorite. Moya & the TARDIS are both great characters.
I’ve always liked just about any sentient/thinking ship. Oddly enough, I can’t think of any examples where a thinking ship has been paired with a wicked design. Although I might just be overlooking something.
But some examples from sci-fi fiction:
- Gay Deceiver (Robert A. Heinlein - he was using the term “gay” in its original sense)
- Helva, from Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship Who Sang (she’s technically a human “Brain” installed in a ship…but the series is written as if she’s the ship in many ways)
- Zora (Star Trek: Discovery . I really wish she’d gotten more time, a Star Trek ship that is sapient is something we should’ve been able to explore in lots of detail)
- ART - Asshole Research Transport, aka Perihelion, from Martha Well’s Murderbot Diaries
Edit: Sorry about the spam, all us social media lemmings are making things slow and buggy, poor lemmy.world can’t keep up with us.
Moya in Farscape might fit the bill, but she only really communicates through the pilot.
The Culture ships. I’m sure at least a few of them look wicked.
Once again the universe tells me I need to read that series.
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I’ve always been fond of the (seemingly) abandoned generation ship Thistledown from Greg Bear’s Eon.
The Disaster Area stunt ship described in “The restaurant at the end of the universe” always fascinates me!
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I’d have to go with the Galactica from Battlestar Galactica.
Basically an aircraft carrier in space, and it didn’t hurt that I grew up on watching the original series. Watching the vipers launch out of the Galactica was pretty cool when you’re young.
What I especially like is the diversity of the whole fleet, all ships are quite different.
The “Adama maneuver “ is still one of the coolest space ship battle moves I’ve seen on screen
From Halo, my favorite ship is probably the Heart of Midlothian, followed by the Spirit of Fire. There’s something I like about the slabbed, angular bow.
From Mass Effect, the Tempest, bar none the most attractive ship I think I’ve ever laid eyes on. I think she looks better when you can walk around her, it’s hard to get a good angle on.
And an odd one out, the Taiidan Destroyers from Homeworld are particularly badass, even if their gun layout is objectively hot garbage. Could say the same about most Taiidan ships, they look less functional and more like the product of an unchallenged imperial navy. Kushan vessels feel comfortably realistic but aren’t visually distinct.
(HD artwork by Jayden Morris on Artstation)
@Izzy The generation ship Asteria from Record of a Spaceborn Few. It sticks with me because every character has a complex and touching relationship with the ship, whether as a home, an object of duty and responsibility, a idyllic myth to live up to, or an anthropological puzzle.
Persepolis Rising (book 7 of The Expanse) the introduction of the Laconia magnetar-class ships were always really cool in my imagination, haha. They just seemed so powerful and impossible to take on.
The Laconian vessels are so eery and weird that I don’t have a strong mental image of them. Might as well be pixelated.
Maybe because the show never depicted them.
I always liked the designs of the ships in Babylon 5 as each culture had a distinctive aesthetic that told you a bit about them - human craft were chunky and practical, Minbari ships were elegant, Vorlon vessels were organic, etc.
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Earth’s Omega -class destroyer was and still is supremely cool to me. Also the utilitarian and cobbled together look or Narn ships had its appeal.
Earth’s Omega -class destroyer was and still is supremely cool to me. Also the utilitarian and cobbled together look or Narn ships had its appeal.
Earth’s Omega -class destroyer was and still is supremely cool to me.
They always have me chills when they dropped in as you knew shit was going to go down.
The ships the humans develop in Stargate seem to owe a debt to the Omega-class but it may just be that it follows the same design thinking - we’d likely start off making things a bit utilitarian at first.
Also the utilitarian and cobbled together look or Narn ships had its appeal.
And they had great markings on them - it reflected their warrior culture, where the Centauri were a little more ostentatious.
The black cruiser from before the fall of the Hegemony in the Hyperion Cantos tends to be the one that appears in my dreams the most, even 30 years later. Also the fucking tree ships.
Maybe it’s because I’m old, but BSG’s vipers.
Oh, and the Lexx!
Lexx!
We need more bug-ships in modern sci-fi. Dune’s thopters don’t quite do it for me.
