Skip to main content

Looking for a story about a giant lost ecological ship, and the quirky guy who became its captain


I recall reading a book where the nondescript quirky captain of an independent starship was hired to take a group to a possible lost starship. The ship was a giant ecological repository and contained tech which had since been lost. Everyone tried to board, running afoul of various creatures and defenses. The independent captain (thought least likely to survive) wound up somehow managing to become recognized by the ecological ship as its new captain-owner, and spent the rest of the book providing its services, on his terms.



Part of this story also appears as a short story in an Analog magazine.


I probably read this in the late 80s, early 90s.



Answer



When you mentioned the part about how the "least likely to survive" guy becomes the new captain-owner of the big, powerful ship, it came to me in a flash!


Tuf Voyaging, a collection of shorter pieces about protagonist Haviland Tuf. Some of them had previously been published separately in magazines, then the author decided to add some new material and splice it all together into one book. These stories were written by George R.R. Martin, long before anyone had ever heard of A Game of Thrones and its sequels.


enter image description here


As you say, Haviland Tuf is part of a boarding party who enter this huge derelict "seedship" (called Ark) in the early pages of the book, and he is the only one who survives to become its new lord and master by default. The seedship has all sorts of superadvanced biotechnology, including the ability to clone various animals, or mass-produce certain viruses, etc., which makes it easy (in later stories, after he gets the hang of things) for him to tell the computers to tinker with one lifeform or another to provide a tailor-made solution to an ecological problem on whatever world he is currently orbiting.


Tuf tries to honor his bargains if his clients will hold up their end of the deal (which is not always the case), but sometimes his solutions turn out to have side effects which are not exactly what the local government, and/or the common people, really wanted. This allows Martin to explore some interesting ethical questions.


I don't have my copy handy, so this isn't a precise quote, but I remember that, at one point, a woman who dislikes his drastic solution to a problem then asks him something along these lines: "Who elected you to play god?"


Tuf says drily: "Politicians are elected. Gods normally arise by other means."



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more