Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Science Fiction Discussion => Topic started by: sherbang on April 05, 2017, 12:21:15 AM
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Can anyone help me remember a story?
It was about living spaceships. The spaceships were like hollowed-out space whales. The "space whales" were captured and forced to serve as spaceships. I think the story revolved around one of them getting free somehow. I can't remember if it was alone, or with help, but I think there was still a person inside along for the ride.
It was podcasted at least a year ago, but probably a few years ago.
I haven't had much luck searching for it. If anyone can help me identify it, I want to share it with a friend, I'd appreciate it.
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The first ones that come to mind for me are the Boojum stories over on Drabblecast.
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That's the one I was looking for. Thanks Fenrix!
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I can't help you with that podcast. But Anne McCaffrey has a series of novels about living spaceships of a different sort. The spaceships are actually cyborgs. The idea is that in the womb babies are identified with severe birth defects, so severe they would die without extensive technological enhancement. A space agency pays the expense of saving their lives and enclosing them in a life support system. They are trained to be the brains of a special kind of FTL spaceship called a brainship. Each brainship has a crew of 2, the brain, which is one of the former students encased in a cylindrical shaped life support system, who is interfaced the spaceship, which she/he senses and controls as his/her body, and the brawn, a graduate of the brawn accademy and selected by the brain, which is the senior partner, to serve as the mobile partner. The 2 are employees of the space agency and are paid for their services, with the brain payed at a higher rate. Once the brain has earned enough to pay back for the cost of both the medical treatment and the spaceship itself, the brainship becomes a free ship having no further obligation to the space agency. "The Ship Who Sang", published in 1969 was the 1st in the series I read.
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The novella Binti also features living starships bred from fish.