Space, even the deep space between the stars, is not entirely empty. As far as we can tell at present, the matter scattered through interstellar space is lifeless. But…appearances can be deceiving. Even if they are not, there’s enough story in the idea of vast beings living in the interstellar depths to attract SF writers.1 Here are five books that took the idea and ran with it…
Angel Station by Walter Jon Williams (1990)
Williams is something of a protean author. In this work, he is in full-bore C.J. Cherryh mode: his free trader protagonists, siblings Ubu Roy and Beautiful Maria, find themselves short on resources in an interstellar milieu with no mercy for the weak. Black hole prospecting is unlikely to pay off, and indeed it doesn’t. Instead the pair stumble over something far more valuable: a space-dwelling being, the Beloved, who commands biotech far more advanced than anything humans have to offer. Humanity has greater mastery of non-biological technology. It’s a perfect setup for trade…but in the end, who will exploit whom?
Buy the Book
Angel Station
The Helix and the Sword by John C. McLoughlin (1983)
In this, the first of McLoughlin’s two standalone novels, humanity’s expansion into space only slightly preceded the collapse of Earth’s ecosystems. Before the collapse, humanity was matter-rich and energy-poor; the new civilization is energy-rich but matter-poor. It is dependent on biotechnology and limited by available asteroid resources in its attempt to support its living ships and space-grown habitats. Now, six thousand years after the fall of Earth, human population has rebounded to its former heights, resulting in a Malthusian crisis. Can another fall of civilization be avoided? Or is humanity doomed to repeat the same stupid mistakes over and over? Protagonist Dyson Tessier takes us into the setting and offers a viewpoint into the events of the plot.
Stoneskin by K. B. Spangler (2017)
The Deep is vast, powerful, and enigmatic. Fortuitously for humans, it appears to find some of us altogether kawaii (cute and adorable). Its human pets are given powers bordering on the magical. Even faster-than-light starships are slow compared to the witches’ ability to coax the Deep into moving cargoes from world to world in an instant. Small wonder that the witches have considerable political power, which they try to wield with doctrinaire neutrality.
The Deep’s patronage freed Tembi from a life of bitter poverty. It did not free her from her memories of childhood. Nor did her new prosperity keep her from asking a question her more privileged classmates don’t like to consider: Is there such a thing as true neutrality? By refusing to take positions in ongoing disputes, are the witches effectively siding with the powerful?
Buy the Book
Stoneskin
The Starfishers Trilogy by Glen Cook (omnibus published 2017, novels published 1982)
The human Confederation faces off against rivals, the Sangaree and the Ulant. There’s another polity in the mix, the Seiners. They are human, but have not allied themselves with the Confederation. They prefer to remain neutral in the space wars. They can do so because they command fast ships and the services of the vaster Starfish, creatures of energy and force fields who call the interstellar deeps home. The Seiner will not be able to remain neutral for long: they are fated to play a key role in the coming struggle against a menace from the galactic core. The agent asked to forge an alliance between Seiners and the Confederation is Moyshe benRabi, a man torn between the many identities he has adopted over the course of years of espionage.
Buy the Book
The Starfishers Trilogy
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (2015)
Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka sneaks away from home in the middle of the night, tempted by a scholarship offer. The university recruiting her is located on another planet, many light years from her native Earth. Her trip will be long; it will be spent within a living starship. It would be a wonderful introduction to the greater universe…were it not for a shocking series of murders on board.
Buy the Book
Binti
***
Beings of the vasty deep is one of my favourite tropes. If you know of any other books or stories I should read, or please mention them in comments.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is currently a finalist for the 2020 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award and is surprisingly flammable.
[1]No need to limit this to books: Legion of Super-Heroes comic book authors Jerry Siegel and Curt Swan imagined a young man gaining superpowers after being eaten by a passing space whale. They named him Jo Nah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Boy
You could make an argument that Vanamonde (Against the Fall of Night/The City and the Stars) fits this category, as well as his off-stage uncle the MAD MIND.
Angel Station is a great book.
You could almost do “5 novels in 5 different Subgenres, All Written By Walter Jon Williams”
Quick check (using isfdb which is not up to date)
Ambassador of Progress (1984) First Contact
Knight Moves (1985) WJW in Zelazny Mode
Hardwired (1986) Cyberpunk
Voice of the Whirlwind (1987) Cyberpunk
The Crown Jewels (1987) SF comedy
House of Shards (1988) SF comedy
Angel Station (1989) First Contact (CJ Cherryh mode)
Ace in the Hole (1990) Super Hero
Days of Atonement (1991) Contemporary SF
Dealer’s Choice (1992) Super Hero
Aristoi (1992) Space Opera
Rock of Ages (1995) SF comedy
Metropolitan (1995) secondary world urban fantasy but not the kind of urban fantasy you’re thinking of
City on Fire (1997) secondary world urban fantasy but not the kind of urban fantasy you’re thinking of
The Rift (1999) [also as by Walter J. Williams] disaster novel
Destiny’s Way (2002) Space Opera, media tie-in
The Praxis (2002) MilSF
The Sundering (2003) MilSF
Conventions of War (2005) MilSF
Implied Spaces (2008) Space Opera (maybe? Don’t have a nice tag for it)
This Is Not a Game (2009) Near Future
Deep State (2011) Near Future
The Fourth Wall (2012) Near Future
Impersonations (2016) MilSF
Quillifer (2017) Secondary World Fantasy
The Accidental War (2018) MilSF
Quillifer the Knight (2019) Secondary World Fantasy
Plus he has a historical series that focuses on one of the minor side-villains of the War to Save Europe from Napoleon.
@3: I was thinking of Atonement and the Dagny series as “Near Future SF thriller” and Aristoi/Implied Spaces as “Super Science Space Opera” but either way, we’ve got more than 5 subgenres
Plus didn’t he write the Heart of Oak rules?
Dr Thanatos@1: Not to mention the Overmind from Childhood’s End.
There’s the volcryn in George R.R. Martin’s novella “Nightflyers”.
The Inhibitors of Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space could qualify, I think.
I always liked those mysterious deep space outsiders (I may have that name wrong) who lived between the stars in Niven’s Known Space series.
“The Game of Rat and Dragon”, by Cordwainer Smith, comes to mind also, however this is a short story….
And there were the Shadows on Babylon 5.
@9 AlanBrown: Niven’s Outsiders weren’t vast, though they were incredibly advanced and powerful.
Fred Hoyle’s The Black Cloud certainly qualifies.
I’ll toss in the dirigible megafauna of Oskendari, from Iain Banks’ Look to Windward. While planet-bound, they’re very long-lived. And when I say very long-lived, I really mean it, which led to one of the most awe-inspiring concluding chapters I’ve read in a long time….
If I understand your topic, I’d suggest the Petaybee books by Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough about the living planet Petaybee – can’t get much more creature of the interstellar depths than a living planet!
Powers that Be, Power Lines & Power Play.
You’ve also got the Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson – that has space dwelling life forms within it.
And of course several Star Trek continuation books include living vessels or deep space fauna.
“Bloodhype” by Alan Dean Foster
https://www.amazon.com/Bloodhype-Adventures-Pip-Flinx-Book-ebook/dp/B000FBFOLO/
Have you done _A Fire Upon the Deep_? Definitely vasty beings.
They barely appear on screen, but the Ships from Julian May’s The Many-Colored Land et seq count, as probably do the Lylmik ships six million years later.
Look to Windward had some pretty vast Behemothaurs…
And of course, Dr Who keeps throwing up some real monstrosities (Akhaten, anyone?)
@12 Thanks for clarifying. I obviously read the article too quickly.
@16 And once I understood the ground rules, I also thought of A Fire Upon the Deep. Good pick!
Yes, and a few years later incorporated them into the Privateers and Gentlemen role-playing game.
I’m not sure if the thing in Peter Watts’ “The Island” qualifies. Vast, yes, but it’s a living Dyson Sphere around a star.
Much of Neal Asher and Alastair Reynold’s many novels have such vast beings populating a universe that also includes humans.
@12: I was wondering, looking at the newness-by-my-standards of JDN’s list, whether anybody was going to remember the Hoyle; it’s the oldest freestanding example I can think of, although I haven’t read Stapledon to know whether he came up with anything in this line. (Vanamonde was earlier, but was the result of a human attempt at AI rather than originating in the vasty deeps.) Hoyle’s stock-in-trade was facing humanity with almost-incomprehensibly-advanced beings, but The Black Cloud may be his most extreme example.
Two I haven’t seen mentioned yet…
John Varley’s Titan trilogy, in which a living being of great size is found orbiting (if I recall correctly) Saturn
A.E. van Vogt’s Space Beagle (as in The Voyage of the) has an encounter with a vast mind in deep space.
Nightflyers?
I vaguely recall something huge and weird turning up to Sector General for treatment.
Mind you I’m probably confusing it with the sentient continent.
The Witches of Karres and Captain Pausert encounter vatches. They are beings of another dimension, who regard humans as amusing dream creatures.
Or is this meant to be mainly or entirely outer space whales, specifically? Or, er, “starfish”. Which I’m assuming are also space whales, rather than “sea creature pointing in several directions”. (Looks at cover of “Stars’ End”) Yup.
Spoiler for Star Trek – “Encounter at Farpoint” was novelized by David Gerrold. Not whales.
Then there’s “The Kraken Wakes”…
If you want space whales, Stephen Baxter’s Spline count. All through the Xeelee sequence, the Spline are space whales that carry passengers.
Solaris? Sentient planet, pretty big.
@29, enslaved space whales that carry passengers. Baxter’s humans in the Xelee sequence are frequently horrible
@27: I’d forgotten that one! (Dim, as I encouraged a dungeon-master known for stfnal monsters to put a vatch in his dungeon.) Wonderful story, and only a little male-gazey (which Schmidt was prone to); the multi-author sequel The Wizard of Karres, OTOH, is Not Recommended.
I dont know if these qualify, but here goes what I thought of –
– Asimov’s Foundation – the end was pretty much like that
– Dan Simmons Endymion – the entity controlling the whole show that lived in interstitial spaces
Vast beings from the darkest depths of space are hinted at in Skyward by Brandon Sanderson and play a major role in the second book, Starsight.
How about The Pinkness in Simak’s Time is the Simplest Thing?
”Hi Pal, I trade with you my mind.”
Julian May’s Saga of the Pliocene Exile and Galactic Milieu: the Ships (crystalline entities that evolved in interstellar space), and the Galactic Mind.
@28 – also re: Star Trek – Star Trek 5 . “What does God need with a starship?”
Adonalsium, whose destruction, while not fully chronicled as of yet, led to the investiture forces within Sanderson’s Cosmere
I was SO hoping to identify a book I read 30 years ago by reading this thread, but no…
Maybe someone here will recognize it?
I can’t recall who wrote this book, or the title or anything. I read it in the 1990s.
There is a series of stories (3? 4?) in the book, about some omnipotent being who creates worlds/universes. The stories are about human beings who are caught up in his universes and what happens to them.
The stories were in chronological order: for example, the first story might have been when the being created a solar system, but then the next would have been about people living there, or something like that. I think there were like four stories within the one book, and the godlike being was in all of them.
It was really interesting, but I have no clue how to find it again.
H.P. Lovecraft and the many-authored Lovecraftian mythos feature this kind of thing a time or five, methinks.
In the awesometastic Larklight trilogy, outer space is a semi-breathable ocean of ether teeming with fish, insects, many other beings, and swarms of beings. I’d say the beings and the swarms are often rather vast. Then there are the somewhat-living ships, and the planets with vast sapient storms…though I don’t really know if anything in the series makes the cut for this list.
@38 If it weren’t for the omnipotent part, it would sound like a Van Vogt fix-up novel, The Silkie. And you didn’t mention a salient detail that I think anyone would have remembered for their description. So it’s unlikely, but I thought I’d throw it out there just in case.
The ship in “Marrow” by Robert Reed is larger than Jupiter, and although it is not a being has unknown motives for its manufacture and current seemingly aimless course.
From the Encylopedia of SF: “It’s part of the more substantial Great Ship sequence – comprising Marrow (fixup 2000), Mere (2005 chap), The Well of Stars (2005), the title story of Eater-of-Bone and Other Novellas (2012), The Greatship (coll 2013) and The Memory of Sky (coll of linked novel-length stories 2014)”
Does Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama qualify as a vast being?
James Alan Gardner’s “League of Peoples” books would qualify. In it are mysterious ascended beings that prevent “Dangerous non-sentients” i.e. murderers, and anyone who knowingly transports them…from leaving their solar systems, by painless, instantaneous executions.
@42 I would put Rama in the BDO (Big Dumb Object) category.
I’m rereading the Belisarius series by Eric Flint et al just now. The premise is that two of humanity’s descendant species in the far future have sent agents to early-6th-century Earth. One agent is there to ensure the eventual dominance of a xenophobic bunch called the new gods, who think of themselves as the only real humans left, by blotting out all cultures that might give rise to inclusive, pluralist attitudes. The other agent is there to stop the first agent on behalf of a group of vast interstellar sentient motile nebulae, more or less, who think of themselves as one human subspecies among many.
@38 – Your description does not bring any books to mind, but I’d like to point you toward Goodreads.com and the group there called “What’s the Name of That Book???” It’s a forum where users post descriptions of books they can’t remember the names of and other posters make suggestions. Someone there might be able to help you.
@38,
I’ve not read these for many years (and didn’t like them, even as a teenager), but your description sounds vaguely like Philip Jose Farmer’s “World of Tiers” series.
The Helix and the Sword is one of those many old books that I am annoyed is not available in eBook format.
I vaguely recall something huge and weird turning up to Sector General for treatment.
Mayhem, you have just described the entire Sector General series.
You probably are thinking of the sentient continents. I don’t recall any patients from deep space.
CHip, totally agree with you on the goodness of Witches of Karres and the badness of Wizard. But I have no idea what you mean by male-gazey. I never noticed that with Schmidt. What I did notice was his wonderful, well rounded female characters. Is it a case of glass had empty or half full?
There’s the one where the ambulance ship encounters the remains of a hyperspace accident which is a huge ship that had one giant creature in it.
@ 46, Susan B:
@38 – Your description does not bring any books to mind, but I’d like to point you toward Goodreads.com and the group there called “What’s the Name of That Book???” It’s a forum where users post descriptions of books they can’t remember the names of and other posters make suggestions. Someone there might be able to help you.
I tried that Goodreads feature. I described an old book. I got an email labeled New discussions from What’s the Name of That Book??? Nobody said a thing about my request. Nor did anyone in the next post. Nor the next. I soon gave up following them. That forum might work for some people. You couldn’t prove it by me.
>50. Fernhunter
LibraryThing has a “What’s That Book?” group that has been helpful in the past, but couldn’t help me with my unknown read I listed above at 38.
@50/51 Reddit has /r/whatsthatbook/ which has a pretty good reputation for success.
@51,52, etc.
The Science Fiction & Fantasy section at Stackexchange (https://scifi.stackexchange.com) is sometimes useful as well.