Amazing & Amusing sci-fi ships encountered

cthia wrote:

barkerpa3466 wrote:One of my favorites is a enemy\alien supper carrier brought back to life to help a desperate alliance defeat an impending invasion.

False Colors (Wing Commander)
by William R. Forstchen, William H. Keith

Sounds rather interesting. A super carrier brought back to life? I've so many questions. Reading will answer that call of the wild.

Thanks.

Maybe a poor choice of words being that a couple of people were talking about actual living ships......basically a derelict orbiting too close to a sun.

cthia wrote:Well, just thanx a lot Michael Everett, for making me feel sleighted, missing out on a very good read. That must go on my list.

Thanx!

Actually, it's anime.
26 episodes plus sequel film (12 hrs or so total).
I haven't read the translated manga of it, so I don't know how accurate it is compared to the source material...

Not sure if you meant Amusing or Amazing cthia.

The ships of the Lensman and Skylark series by E.E. "Doc" Smith from the 1930's/40's are the best of the pulp fiction era, IMHO. Huge, with awesome weapons, galaxy-spanning ability, counted in the millions (yes, millions) of ships...The Skylark of Space began as a small globe and by the end of the series was a 1000-mile sphere with the capability of destroying galaxies (and I do not exaggerate). Doc did not write on a small scale....

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention perhaps my first exposure to anime (back in the 1970's): Space battleship Yamato (carried here in the USA as Star Blazers).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Battleship_Yamato
, which actually used the Yamato (it was more successful against aliens than opposing the US Navy).

And for amusing, I would recommend Schlock Mercenary, a web cartoon that has been running daily for almost 15 years with a rather eclectic group of ships (from the "Touch-and-Go" to the "Post-Dated Check Loan" to truly huge Battleplates.

Hutch wrote:
Not sure if you meant Amusing or Amazing cthia.

The ships of the Lensman and Skylark series by E.E. "Doc" Smith from the 1930's/40's are the best of the pulp fiction era, IMHO. Huge, with awesome weapons, galaxy-spanning ability, counted in the millions (yes, millions) of ships...The Skylark of Space began as a small globe and by the end of the series was a 1000-mile sphere with the capability of destroying galaxies (and I do not exaggerate). Doc did not write on a small scale....

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention perhaps my first exposure to anime (back in the 1970's): Space battleship Yamato (carried here in the USA as Star Blazers).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Battleship_Yamato
, which actually used the Yamato (it was more successful against aliens than opposing the US Navy).

And for amusing, I would recommend Schlock Mercenary, a web cartoon that has been running daily for almost 15 years with a rather eclectic group of ships (from the "Touch-and-Go" to the "Post-Dated Check Loan" to truly huge Battleplates.

I changed the title Hutch. Thanks. I suppose I just assumed that amazing ships would also be amusing.

At any rate, both should be covered now. Of course, this thread serves to poke huge holes into my sci-fi database. A galaxy destroyer?

Thanx again.

****** *

Oh! I am afraid that my anime experience is limited to
All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku.
http://youtu.be/ikRyQA8X69M

Hey, I was going to mention the Lexx, but your article is a lot more detailed.

How about the Nirvana?

Originally the Ikazucchi, one section of a colony ship, built around a mysterious crystalline structure called the Pyxis that powers and controls the ship and its shields and weapons. The ship is hijacked by pirates when launched. One of the pirates has crashed a “Dread” fighter into the ship’s interior near the Pyxis and is unable to extricate it. With missiles closing in, she panics and yells for help. The Pyxis seems to be sensitive to strong emotion, and responds by punching a hole in space, transporting the ship and everything near it an unspecified but long distance away from the threat, and gloms the Ikazucchi, the pirates’ ship, and a large amount of space junk together creating a new ship. It also modifies three of the pirates’ fighters and a “Vanguard” giant armored suit so that they can combine into more powerful forms. Over the course of more than a year spent returning to where they started, both the ship and the “VanDread” combinations develop new capabilities, usually triggered by an emergency and somebody’s desperate need to overcome it.
-------------------
Long ago, when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, they called it witchcraft. Now they call it golf.
------------------

Daryl wrote:Julian May's Saga of the Exiles series has a ship that is similar to the one you mentioned, being sentient, biological, and extremely large.

Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers are enormous sentient robot ships that destroy all life when they find it.

Anne McCaffrey's Ship who Sang has a human brain wired into it in such a way that the ship is like a body to it.

John Ringo's books have lots of male fantasy gear. His Troy is a large nickel iron asteroid hollowed out that uses massive sun powered lasers, while his Pozleen ships are battle globes that can split up.

While not ships the Bolos are damn tough.

To many to mention but the novellas in Analog magazine had many interesting ship concepts.

Julian May's series starting with The Many-Colored Land is epic, but the ship is really only a bit part.

Anne McCaffrey's "Shellpeople" are not just brains; they are people born with crippling deformities living inside life-support "shells" who can plug into cybernetic systems to extend their senses and control ships and other things.
---------------
Politicians are never happy; they are always sure there's somebody, somewhere with a nickel they haven't taxed.

INS MacArthur from Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye. Heinlein called it the best first contact novel he had ever seen; someone else called it Horatio Hornblower in space (prior to RFC claiming this crown!).

The battlecruisers from Smith and TrowBridge's Exordium series - FTL weapons and microjumps combined with lightspeed sensors.

The guardships from Glen Cook's The Dragon Never Sleeps.

A host of ships (right down to the deckplans) from the old pen-and-paper RPG Traveller.

cthia wrote: A galaxy destroyer?

Thanx again.

Well, the last iteration of the Skylark series had the ability to pull suns out of a galaxy, transplant them to another galaxy (where the Really Evil Aliens Out To Kill Us All (tm) lived) right next to the Bad Guy's stars, causing them to explode (remember, 1940's didn't have a lot of the astronomical knowledge we have now) while at the same time saving the "Enslaved" systems by moving them from the doomed galaxy to yet a third galaxy.

So year, blowing up a hundred-billion suns pretty much is a galaxy destroyer.

Like I said, Doc didn't think small....

For a Weber forum I'm shocked no one has mentioned Megaira, pretty damn tough ship right there.

From Farscape I was thinking more of Talon than Moya. Humph, a spaceship with teen angst.

From Mass Effect, the SR-2 Normandy. EDI rocks and Joker was a heck of a pilot.

Space Pirate Captain Harlock's Arcadia was a pretty awesome ship.

BrightSoul wrote:For a Weber forum I'm shocked no one has mentioned Megaira, pretty damn tough ship right there.

Yep, and then of course there is Dahak.

Not an awesome ship by any means, but for a brilliant TV series try Firefly.