Dreamships

Dreamships #1

by Melissa Scott

Dreamships is the story of a freelance space pilot and her crew, who are hired by a rich corporate owner to track down her crazy brother--who just may have created the first sentient Artificial Intelligence. Social texture and a tough, cyberpunk attitude make this an exceptionally intense read.

Genres: Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy, LGBT, Space Opera

338 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Scott studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis University, and earned her PhD. in comparative history. She published her first novel in 1984, and has since written some two dozen science fiction and fantasy works, including three co-authored with her partner, Lisa A. Barnett.

Scott's work is known for the elaborate and well-constructed settings. While many of her protagonists are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered, this is perfectly integrated into the rest of the story and is rarely a major focus of the story. Shadow Man, alone among Scott's works, focuses explicitly on issues of sexuality and gender.

She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction in 1986, and has won several Lambda Literary Awards.

In addition to writing, Scott also teaches writing, offering classes via her website and publishing a writing guide.

Scott lived with her partner, author Lisa A. Barnett, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for 27 years, until the latter's death of breast cancer on May 2, 2006.

Reviews

[BJ Lillis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up for $1.99 at a used book store in Maine, attracted by the cover, the price, and the general sense of vintage-scifi promise it emanated. I swear to God, I had absolutely no idea that Melissa Scott was known for writing queer characters back in the 80s and 90s. No clue. And there isn’t a hint in the jacket copy. Go figure.

This is earnest and involved cyberpunk. Queernorm from a time when that wasn’t really a thing. It took a while to get into, but I sort of enjoy that fish-out-of-water feeling, so common in the opening chapters of old science fiction novels. No hand-holding, not exactly info-dumping—just a world to figure out.

The technology is pretty interesting. The book was published in 1992, which puts it at a curious time relative to the internet. The general lack of wireless connectivity is jarring, but also intriguing. CD punk. It reminds me of reading golden age scifi when I was a kid, totally disoriented by the thought of distant-future worlds running on magnetic tape.

So many of Scott’s themes—racially inflected mass politics, artificial intelligence, disability, the queer ordinary—are more relevant than ever in 2024. But what I enjoyed most about Dreamships was the novel at its least topical and most strange—pyschosexual spaceship design, interstellar travel as embodied experience. And of course, your classic cyberpunk hacker gangsters. All in all, just as much fun as I’d hoped.

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit slow to start, but this ends up being a riveting sci-fi novel with thriller elements and really well-thought out world-building. Jian is a pilot asked to take on a dangerous job flying an experimental space ship. Things go wrong and Jian wonders if the ship might host an AI. Possibly?

Thematically, this does something a bit different with questions of personhood and rights. Political and racial tensions on Persephone mean that there are factions advocating for the rights of AI, while the leaders of an underclass of humans are angry that machines might get rights before they do. It deftly highlights how some fights for rights and justice simultaneously neglect other classes of people.

This came out in the early 90's and it's fascinating to read it 30 years later. Technology has changed a lot since then and you can definitely see the influence of where things were at in 1992 in the technological world-building. That's not a bad thing, but it is interesting.

The casual queerness of characters here is also cool. Right now we have a LOT of queer SFF coming out, but there's less I'm aware of from this time. Scott is openly gay and the main character of the book is likely bisexual. I'm glad I read this one!

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one kept me up until 3AM on first read, back in 1993. I just found a copy of an embarassingly-gushy fan letter to the author, which I certainly won't be sharing. But here's what I liked about Dreamships:

* The dense, lived-in feel of Persephone.
* Good, well-thought-out extrapolation - two prereqs (for me) for first-rank SF.
* A clean and twisty plotline.
* Nice touches of moral ambiguity.
* Quirky characters who rang true.
* Good slang, nice techtalk - karakuri, Bi'Jian, haya, glyphs, Dreampeace... all right!

I wonder if civil rights for human-like constructs would really be a hot topic before they exist? Suspension of disbelief covered this while I was reading, but it bothers me (a little) now.

The only thing that bothered me while reading was - no backups of Manfred the AI when Mitexi crashed the system. They almost lost the ship! Why wasn't there a *closet*-full of backups?? The obvious work-around - Mad Mitexi trashes the backups too. Picky, picky.

Books like Dreamships are why I keep reading SF. I didn't like it quite as well on reread, but a first-rate book. I should read it again sometime.

[Az Vera · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most realistic, absorbing sci-fi universes I have ever dived into so I've got to dedicate a bit to it:

What got me hooked most of all was how it manages to stay clear of one of the most common pitfalls of catapulting modern society forward a few thousand years and instead builds it's own rich cultures meshing in an underground city. There is a strong class system and racial tensions, there are ethical arguments surrounding burgeoning artificial intelligences contrasted against the deprivation of rights that many of the local populace suffers under. Greetings, formalities, cuisine, family groupings, and entertainment are all thought out in great detail.

The technology is a close second in terms of world-building coolness; Melissa Scott has done so well in creating futuristic wetware, software, etc that doesn't shy away from showing it's own pitfalls. Characters are occasionally blinded when they forget to turn down the blindness on their overlays when they walk into a data-filled environment and jumping into someone else's customised VR system will leave you floundering like if you tried to use a colleague's weird trackball and Dvorak keyboard in real life.

The characters are also really well created and diverse without falling into stereotypes. The lack of sexualisation of Jian while still not denying her sexuality in her thoughts is refreshing to read. No characters are presented as entirely good or evil, they all have quirks that make them at times intolerable and loveable and most of all: human.

Overall, this is an amazing book, read it.

[penny shima glanz · Rating 4 out of 5]

If one were to take a mash-up of my undergraduate degree (Computer Science:Artificial Intelligence, also Psycholinguistics wannabe) and crossed it with my graduate degree (Information & Archive Management) and mixed in my random interests you might come up with this book. I randomly picked it off the shelf at the used bookstore and am delighted to have found it. I enjoyed reading it and will look into Scott's other writings.

[Robbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was good but Dreaming Metal was better. I think that I'd have enjoyed this more if I'd not read the sequel first, but I did enjoy it all the same. The author's attention to human detail in the world-building was excellent, if a bit too much telling rather than showing. I think that may be what I liked more about Dreaming Metal: all the social constructs and tech were conveyed more naturally as part of the story. That said, there were things that this book cleared up due to its more verbose explanations. It was really interesting and pretty engaging once I finally got into it; and I really liked how the story played out.

[Whitney (SecretSauceofStorycraft) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This forgotten tale is almost cyberpunk but without the drugs and hopelessness….

The first of a duology set in a future where driving starships requires heavy training and is almost like creating and navigating your own psyche in a VR setting— we follow Jiran, a female pilot hired on to help a rich woman fetch her long-lost brother from a distant system. But the captain rolls out a new AI and interface they want her to “test” that seems very advanced and they keep getting attacked…… clearly more is at stake here.

This was an incredibly fun space romp decades ahead of its time. I cannot wait to pick up the second one….

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should have read this book before "Dreaming Metal" (the sequel).
Some of the things I expected to become clear (that weren't so clear in the second book) did - for example, why so many people in the books are deaf (random mutation, small population), and the origin and exact stances of the many political groups. Other things were not really explained (why Red was in jail, anything having to do with his & Imre's very odd relationship.)
The main character here is Reverdy Jian, a starship pilot and part of a team with Imre and Red. Their agent is approached by a wealthy woman who wishes to hire them for a job - but she's a little mysterious and cagey about the exact nature of the venture, which will definitely involve both testing an experimental ship's computer and searching for her missing brother - who is variously rumored to be a brilliant programmer, crazy, and/or dead.
Not wanting to get into anything more than they can handle, the team goes behind their new employer's back to try to get more information about what's actually going on. Slowly, but suspensefully, they uncover a complex web of crime, underground programming secrets, big companies that will do a lot to get their hands on those secrets, and questions about the nature of the Spelvin constructs - computer personalities without which starships would be impossible to fly."

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love everything Melissa Scott writes

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hooo goodness. I sure WANTED to like this book. I will say, it’s Cyber As Fuck, which is a point in its favor! It’s also about a woman character, people with disabilities and different races, and it made me want to eat the hell out of some delicious salty flavored noodles and ride super fast trains on space stations.

But... it was just so doggone disappointing! It’s REALLY descriptive. Like, a lot of description. And the describing of things. So much. With the more descriptions.

The plot seems promising, but is frequently interrupted (each time it gets going) by description. And then, it goes...nowhere, really. It’s an endless nongasm, each time you start to get into it it just peters back out.

[Worms · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stumbled upon a pristine copy of this book randomly at a used book store, looked it up and saw the word Cyberpunk attached - instant buy. I'm surprised I've never come across this author nor any of her work before.

First off, Melissa Scott must be praised for the worldbuilding and level of detail in this book. The world here is incredibly fleshed out, and I get the sense that the author spent an enormous amount of time developing the city, how things work in universe, etc. We're given hints about lots of cool future tech, along with an almost endless array of detail about the world and things going on within it. It's all very impressive.

However, for all the excellent worldbuilding, the narrative itself is, unfortunately, paper thin. There are SO many pages devoted to absolute minutiae, and the reader quickly realizes that the vast majority of it is irrelevant as none of it has any impact on the narrative whatsoever-- this takes the book from an incredibly-dense-but-interesting read to a flat out slog. I found myself skimming through a lot of these prolonged descriptive passages. There will be multiple pages devoted to bland things like docking their ship (where nothing of note happens), yet when it's time for the actual plot to happen its both extremely quick and rather mundane. It will be 30 pages of them flying the ship, thinking repetitive thoughts about the AI and making crooked smiles, and then 2 pages of them doing the actual plot-moving stuff. For example: they're looking for a guy who is supposed to be in hiding on some remote world - oh, they find him immediately. There is a hint of conflict, something major is about to pop off - oh, its resolved in 2 paragraphs and is largely inconsequential. Etc.

The other major downfall of this book is the characters, or lack thereof. This is particularly disappointing because there are only a couple of major characters so you'd think they'd be detailed endlessly, but in fact we learn almost nothing about them. For the bulk of the book only Jian and Vaughn are doing anything, yet they both remain flat and dull. There is zero chemistry between them or anyone else. We get a few hints about Jian's past, but it doesn't have much impact. Vaughn's entire character is limited to being kind of a jerk for... some reason... and the Red character exists and that's about it. They're not given strong desires or motivations, and we learn next to nothing about their emotions or feelings on anything - Jian kind of doesn't like AI, but then kind of does, but then kind of doesn't again. That's the whole arc. The characters only do things or get involved in situations because the book needs something to happen and they're the MCs, not because they care or have vested interest in anything.

These points wouldn't be so bad if there was at least one or two good characters in there that really vibed with Jian (or even if Jian herself was more developed)-- for example, Vaughn and Red would have made fine background characters in a larger crew, but neither is interesting enough to carry all the focus they're given. I REALLY wanted to like the Jian character as the components are definitely there, but the author fails to make her genuinely interesting. All of this makes it impossible to get invested in their lives or stories.

The story itself is way too slow until the very end which turns into more of a heist and there is some action. The end sequence is pretty good, and I enjoyed the way the author concluded things, but again it's extremely short compared to all the fluff.

Overall the story is definitely cyberpunk and explores some cool and topical ideas. The themes are extremely relevant today, the (limited) narrative holds up quite well 30+ years later, and the tech still feels compelling and futuristic. There is excellent worldbuilding, however-- I never thought I would say that something had too much detail, but this book somehow manages to achieve that.

Worth reading, but had the potential to have been so much better than it was.

[eggdropsoap · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about machine intelligence on the surface only; in substance it is really about how class divisions inherently undermine human rights.

Full of immersive worldbuilding and detail, but it feels like the plot was an afterthough, as if it was merely a vehicle for touring around the well-thought-out places, politics, and people. It felt like a living, breathing world, but the story didn't feel alive.

I feel conflicted rating this. The worldbuilding is excellent and engrossing, but the book itself as-a-book is not a compelling whole. Jian's story was just enough to want more, but not in the sense that what we were given was so great that it leaves you wanting more — instead in the sense of getting an inadequate glimpse of something and wishing there had been more initial substance.

It feels like this would have been more appropriate as a setting guidebook for a roleplaying game (though undoubtedly that would have been less financially successful).

I would recommend this to anyone who valued depth in political and social details, or who would find the theme of the struggle for human rights being mediated by/interfered with class warfare compelling. The nature of AI and consciousness was potentially raised as a theme but never addressed, despite it being a practical issue for the characters, so it doesn't really contribute to the literature on the nature of the mind and our relationship to (the idea of) machine intelligence — the concept of AI is really just a foil for the political and human rights issues that are the real thematic core of the narrative.

[a hooded figure from your friendly neighbourhood dog park · Rating 3 out of 5]

not quite what I expected and one character death seemed like a letdown, but I loved the heroine and the setting was refreshingly different from anything else. Doesn't read like a book from the 90s, feels pretty modern! especially the casual bisexuality and stuff.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though the book was a little hard to understand the surroundings first, the further into it you got, the more you learned about the world and sooner or later I didn't have that problem that I initially had. The story itself was fascinating and well written, but I had one serious problem that I didn't quite figure out until much farther in the book. At first it was that I didn't really like them. I mean it wasn't as if any were horribly awful or annoying, but none of them appealed to me. I also didn't understand the relationship of the two guys; mostly, why was the shy guy going out with the jerk. Then the AI came in and after a while it hit me, the characters felt rather fake to me, I mean, I was starting to feel that the AI was the most real of the group. There was something wrong with how they were made, like they were built rather then created I guess. It wasn't a bad book through and through, but as someone who puts quite a lot of focus on characters, I just felt a little unsatisfied when I got to the end.

[Elaine taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good solid sci-fi book. I love this author whether she is writing techie sci-fi or space opera. Her examination of the schisms between various sectors of society is always enjoyable and feels like a good prediction of the future.

[Bard Bloom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Melissa Scott at her best is excellent. This isn't her best. It's approximately cyberpunk, and in most respects pretty generic cyberpunk, except that the protagonists are mostly gay (in a world where that is unremarkable.)

[John Snead · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is her best work - it's an exploration of politics, oppression, and a complex and fascinating look at artificial intelligence.

[S46354595 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jian is my pathetic little meow meow. If you want her, you'll have to pry her out of my cold, dead hands.

Dreamships and Dreaming Metal Review

5/5 stars

This will be a spoiler free review. Onto the review!

I read this duology to fill one of the prompts on the r/fantasy bingo for 2024 (which went through the end of March, so you can see how behind I am on reviews oh no) and also because I had read and enjoyed The Master of Samar by the same author in 2023. If you’re curious to see what this author does with fantasy, I highly recommend giving The Master of Samar a try. It’s about this guy who inherits a mansion from his family in a Venetian inspired city, which may or may not be cursed. I loved that book.

So of course when I saw that I needed a book published in the 90s by an author who had something published in the last five years, I wanted to give her older sci-fi series a try. And I ended up loving these two books.

The first book follows Jian, a spaceship pilot. She and her two best friends get hired to help this woman navigate her brother’s ship to another planet to find her brother who went missing. At first, they’re skeptical about taking the job, because the ship was custom built, and they don’t know if it’s safe. They’re especially nervous about the AI system that would help them fly the ship, due to it being highly modified. Any mistakes in the code could cause them to crash into something.

They eventually do decide to take the job, mostly because the pay is really good. Once they’re on the ship, they realize just how much of this ship and its AI was custom made by this lady’s brother. The AI doesn’t just do its job. It follows everybody around, chatting as if it were a normal human. And there are a bunch of weird maze-like rooms on the ship that have been handcrafted by an artist. It unnerves Jian a little bit, because she’s used to ships just being machines for transport, not artistic statements.

There’s some talk about how back on their home planet, these people who belong to a political movement called Dreampeace are trying to get rights for AI, because they believe that someday a fully sentient AI will be created. But this group is at odds with the Coolie people who are a specific race of people that don’t have as many rights as everyone else. Coolie people are often deaf, and are often othered by non-Coolie people because of their differences. So it comes as a shock to them that the Dreampeace movement is trying to get AI rights when not even all humans have rights.

The super advanced AI on the custom ship almost feels like sentient AI to Jian, but she doesn’t want to get involved in all the drama and politics. The more she learns about the guy who made it and the ship, the more she thinks that their return home (potentially with him in tow) might cause huge issues on their home planet. Jian doesn’t know what this woman’s plans are once she finds her brother, nor does she know what the brother wants, since he was presumed dead for many years.

The first half of the first book is set on the ship, as they travel to retrieve the brother. The second half is back on their home planet, dealing with the fallout. Book two follows both Jian and two new characters as they navigate the political turmoil that started in the first book. The two new characters are a member of a new Coolie band that’s struggling to write their first full length album, and a woman who performs stage magic. I liked the perspectives that the new characters brought to the story, especially since Jian doesn’t want to have anything to do with politics. I especially liked having a Coolie perspective, because it really made that aspect of the story stand out as compared to the first book.

It was kind of weird seeing the old fashioned version of AI that people thought would be possible, where a computer would be able to gain sentience. Now that we have seen what AI actually looks like, what its limitations are, and what sorts of problems it can create, this almost felt like a fantasy we’ll never be able to achieve. Honestly, I would prefer sentient AI over the version of AI we’re getting in the real world right now, but there’s not much anyone can do about that.

One of my favorite things about this series is how much the author recognizes that we as readers really want to feel like we completely understand what the characters are experiencing on a sensory level. In the first book, we get to see Jian connect herself to the ship’s navigation system and experience what that’s like for her. And in the second book, we get to see the two creative characters working on their craft in real time.

I feel like that sort of sensory detail is something we’ve lost a little bit in fiction recently, likely because we aren’t experiencing things in that way as much as people were 30 years ago due to the rise of the internet. Rather than going outside and experiencing the world through our five senses, we’re instead going online and seeing the world that way. Writers today often talk about how easy it is to write pages and pages of dialogue, but the in-between details take far longer to figure out how to articulate on paper. Bring back writing sensory details into fiction! I’m so sick of reading books that feel like I’m reading a script for a play. If I want that, I’ll go watch a play at the theater, where they have elaborate costumes, sets, and music to make me feel engaged.

If you are looking for a great sci-fi series that will make you nostalgic for the big sci-fi and cyberpunk classics of the 80s and 90s, this is a great series to try. I honestly sort of feel like this is a better version of the kind of sci-fi tech integration with the human body than when I tried to read the original Ghost in the Shell manga a little while ago. Once I get around to reviewing that, you’ll immediately understand. Long story short, I may have potentially left an angry rant of a goodreads review because of one particular author’s note that made me dnf the entire thing. It was…bad. Extremely awful. So instead of reading that piece of garbage, read this duology instead! It’s so good! I loved these two books very much.

Have a nice day/night everyone!

[trell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not that there aren’t interesting ideas in this book, but it’s very weak in terms of narrative + characters, and also fails to actually think through its own central question in RE: machine intelligence. If an author doesn’t have the tech chops to write hard sci-fi then I think they need to lean into being character-driven, but Scott both a) lacks the technical knowledge to say anything interesting about artificial intelligence (or at least didn’t give it much thought, despite the question of machine sentience being central to the plot) and b) writes flat characters, which isn’t a great combination.

The society and setting details were interesting, but overall this is just not a good book. No character development, no really interesting narrative developments (definitely some flat-out idiot plot moments in the last 25%), and no interesting perspectives on futuristic technology. There was an attempt!

[Kat Heatherington · Rating 4 out of 5]

startlingly good. it gets off to a pretty slow start, but gains momentum and dynamic tension rapidly once the plot gets moving, and before you're halfway through, it's a can't-put-it-down page turner. Really interesting characters and sharp, smart science that makes you think. Definitely reccomend.

As a side note, I wasn't aware that Scott was a lesbian author until I picked this up, so the several LGBTQ main characters were a delightful surprise. Their queerness is in no way a focus of the story, merely a facet of each complex character, and goes unremarked as being any kind of item of interest on its own, which I deeply appreciate. Representation outside of the old tired coming out story! ftw. I am now going to track down and read everything else Melissa Scott ever published.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hired by a rich businesswoman to fly her ship to the planet Refuge to retrieve her crazy but brilliant brother, freelance pilot Jian and her crew inadvertenly become involved with what appears to be the first true AI ever created - a deeply controversial issue that lands them in the middle of rival factions, riots and potentially in the line of fire of those willing to kill to get their hands on it.

A thoughtful exploration of the AI theme in combination with excellent worldbuilding and diverse, intriguing characters make this a wonderfully absorbing read - not that I'd have expected anything less from this author.

[SteveRv · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can see the framework of the writer Scott will become but this book just isn’t fulfilling. I just couldn’t finish it. It starts off in a rambling manner that was just not entertaining. The book may pull together later but I don’t have time to invest in a story that drags on so slowly . It’s supposed to be about a possible sentient spaceship AI but by page 75 we haven’t even made it to the spaceport let alone getting an introduction to it.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent and complex world-build with deep intersectionalities of gender, labor, heritage, and ability. A quick ending with a hook to sequel "Dreaming Metal" left me missing Reverdy, Red, and Crazy Imre.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

These two books should really be read in order. one can read them backwards, like I did. but you understand the second one better if you read this one first.

also I think the social issues in these books are surprisingly relevant now.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it does trail a bit into being cumbersome in its character descriptions and world-building, Dreamships is incredibly engrossing. I haven’t read a book that made me want to stay up late in a long time.

[Missi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is good science fiction with a great twisted ending!

[Cheryl]

Dave says (tedious, would have been good as a novelette or shorter)... I'm sure I'll try it anyway, assuming I do inherit it from him.

[Maeve_Ever]

Summer Try-A-Chapter DNF.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

My third reading. It’s still a great story. The tech is showing some age and the terminology is too, but with AI being in the news lately the main theme of this book is still very relevant.

[Riri · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5