Elizabeth Howell, writing at Space.com, put together a list entitled The 25 Greatest Spaceships of Science Fiction. It has the can’t-do-without classics, such as the Millennium Falcon, the USS Enterprise series, Doctor Who’s TARDIS, the Battlestar Galactica, and–my personal favorite– the Rocinante.
It’s a great list. But it stops with star ships, which are really quite small. The biggest ship on her list is the mothership from the movie Independence Day, which comes in at over 300 miles long.
Two masters of science fiction, Gregory Benford and Larry Niven, think way way bigger. In their book, Bowl of Heaven, and its sequel, ShipStar, they envision a species that turns a star into a ship to travel through the universe. Humans on an interstellar voyage encounter a bowl-shaped artifact that half envelopes a star. Mysteriously, the star is heading toward the humans’ destination. The bowl has a habitable area bigger than a million earths. The humans land and…OMG.
Can’t think bigger than that! The books are great reads and an essential addition to your list of space ships
Full disclosure: if you click on a book and then decide to buy it, Amazon gives me a few pennies. Your cost is the same whether you buy here or some other way. (This is why Jeff Bezos is as rich as a shipstar is big.)
Text © 2018 by Ted Macaluso.
Ted Macaluso - Author 