What is a soulship? It's a biomechanical creation, with an organic flesh hull that was specially grown. It has a biological/mechanical mind. It started out at as high-level AI on the verge of consciousness.
So far, not so strange, but it's at this point that the narrative does turn odd.
One of my inspirations for Auroradawn was reading Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders book Ship of Magic. I loved the way the heroine, Althea, felt connected with the Liveship Vivacia. Robin describes it as Althea having a sense of connection with the liveship's 'near-life'. The idea inspired me, and I wanted to write my own version of it.
Ship of Magic is very definitely fantasy. Liveships come alive through the flowing of their dead captains' 'anma' into their timbers, and each death brings the ship closer to awakening. Auroradawn is firmly SF. I re-worked Robin's ideas in an SF context. Instead of a hull made of wizardwood, Auroradawn has a bioengineered organic hull. I have each dead Great Family Captain's memories being transferred to a crystal that is linked into a reader in the soulship's Memory Room. The ship reads the memories it contains, and integrates them with the memories of each previous Captain.
At some stage, a critical point is reached where the memories tip the high-level AI over into full sentience. The current Captain carries a command implant in her head, and the ship is able to talk telepathically with its Captain on Awakening.
But all this strangeness is familiar to my heroine Arrien. She's grown up knowing it, and so my challenge was to write the scene through her eyes, yet provide enough explanation for the reader. Arrien wouldn't stop to explain how the system worked, she's known it from birth. But the reader can only learn about her world through Arrien's eyes and mind. I had to find a way to get the information across in her narrative, in a way that didn't seem awkward or forced.
I think I've got the balance right, but I'll see when I send the novel out on submission.
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