The Starwalker is a starship with an experimental star-stepping drive. Designed to use the gravity wells of stars to fold space, she can travel between star systems faster than FTL. That is, if they can get it to work.
She is run by a sophisticated AI who doesn’t always follow her programming. She has only just been born, and she has a lot to figure out. She is often torn between the needs of the crew and the demands of the scientists responsible for running the tests on the new drive. There are politics surrounding this new drive of hers that she has to get a grip on before they get a grip on her.
Most of all, she needs to track down and explain the glitches in her software before someone notices and wipes her memory drives. What she doesn’t know is that it wouldn’t be the first time.
Starwalker is the new web fiction project by Melanie Edmonds author of “The Apocalypse Blog” which I reviewed here, and in my opinion it’s a much stronger project.
Likes:
1. The concept. A ship’s log told by the ship is wonderful.
2. Starwalker (the ship) has a wonderfully distinctive voice. I can imagine what she sounds like just from the way she uses words.
3. The story is currently in the midst of its second chapter but the tension is building beautifully. We’re already getting strong hints of the problems facing the protagonist if anyone catches on that she’s “malfunctioning”. (Where malfunctioning equals having a mind of her own), and there’s a mystery building up – why is she unaware of certain things.
4. The protagonist, as I mentioned, is the AI that runs the ship. It’s a computer, but I’m empathising with her. She feels like a real person and I want her to win out. This is no small feat.
5. The peeks at other crew members are good as well.
Dislikes:
Not many. It’s early days to tell if it’s going to run into any of the problems I found with Apocalypse Blog, but so far it’s a much more vibrant read. The only caveat I have so far is that it’s fairly light – which isn’t a problem so much as an observation.
Summary:
Starwalker is a fun SF Blog fic with an engaging main character, and the fact it’s a still in the early stages means it’s a good time to start reading before there is a mountain of backlog to read through.
4 Stars
I’ve been meaning to check this story out — sounds intriguing! I wouldn’t mind lightness as I found Apocalypse Blog far too dark for my liking.