8 Stellar Sci-Fi Books With Living Spaceships

This Star Wars–inspired space opera follows the adventures of a family against a backdrop of a long-running war between the inhabitants of a planet, Landfall, and its orbiting moon, Wreath. Alana and Marko, formerly soldiers on opposite sides of the war, fall in love and have a child, Hazel, which leads to them being pursued by figures on both sides of the conflict. The small family goes on the run in a living wooden spaceship, grown in the Rocketship Forest, which is sentient and plans its own flightpath, only taking suggestions, not orders, from its passengers.

First in the Xenogenesis series, Dawn is a story set over two centuries after Earth has been all but destroyed by nuclear war. Lilith, one of the last surviving humans, wakes on a living spaceship belonging to an alien species known as the Oankali, who have a proposal for humanity; they will return them to earth, and help them rebuild the planet, if Lilith and the other remaining humans agree to let their species combine to create a new form of life.

The first in the YA series The Honors, Honor Among Thieves is set in a future where human criminals – including the heroine Zara – are recruited into a force known as the Honors. The Honors are selected by the Leviathan, a race of sentient alien spaceships, who want human guides to help them explore new areas of space. Zara and Nadim, the spaceship she’s assigned to, form a bond that gives Zara stability she has never known before, but the distant reaches of space are dangerous, and their new-found friendship may not be enough to keep them alive.

A classic sci-fi novel by the author of the famous Dragonriders of Pern series, The Ship Who Sang is based around the concept of combining humans and technology to create sentient spaceships. ‘Brainships’, spaceships powered by a human brain, are paired with a pilot known as a ‘brawn’, and must carry out service for the Central Worlds. Written in 1969, the book has been criticised for its portrayal of disability. The ‘brainships’ are children with physical disabilities, who must work for the Central Worlds to pay off the medical debts, and who have been coerced into giving up their bodies rather than society changing to accommodate disabled people; rather than examining this, the novel assumes that disabled people would prefer to become brainships than existing in their own bodies.

Nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards, The Tea Master and the Detective is set in a world of humans and mindships, and follows one of the ships, The Shadow’s Child, as she is hired to retrieve a body and investigate a murder. With Sherlockian vibes and fascinating worldbuilding, this novel digs into trauma, addiction, and the bond between humans and mindships.