Day 174: Seed Ship

I have something of an obsession with the idea of a seed ship, another one of those sci-fi tropes you see all the time wherein humans send a ship full of embryos to start a civilization on a new planet far, far away. This trope is has a special place in my brain because of how close it is to reality. We've already sent satellites like the Voyager craft billions of miles out into space, and it still sends us updates from time to time. If it were just a little faster, a little bigger, and probably a lot more complicated, it might just be able to achieve something close to what a seed ship can do. It feels almost within reach, even if the practicality of the idea is maybe questionable. The Earth will inevitably be wiped clean by a giant meteor, or a cataclysmic volcano, or a solar storm the likes of which we've never imagined. Planting life somewhere else in the galaxy by sending out a seed ship could be the only insurance we ever have access to.

There's a game called Seed Ship that explores this very idea. It's absolutely free and can be run from your browser. You play as an AI aboard a seed ship who's purpose is to find a planet to start a new human colony. It's a text based game, but the attention to detail is spot on, from the planetary features that determine the outcome of your colony, to the way the status markers of your ship flicker on when you load in the game. It's pretty simple as far as games go, and there are limited outcomes, but I find myself drawn to it every so often just as I am to the idea itself.

Here it is if you'd like to give it a try yourself.

I've been trying to integrate this idea into a new story I'm working on. I'm only in the planning stage, and probably won't start writing until I've finished Oneiromancer, but I think it will be good to have something to work on while I let Oneiromancer marinate between editing. I want to keep in the habit and think a seed ship story will be something that draws me back over and over even when I don't feel up to writing. The ideas that keep me interested over the course of years, not weeks or months, are the only ones I'm certain to keep writing about.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley