10 Best Fictional Ship Names
Image by Willgard Krause from Pixabay
Hello!
I’ve been reading Skyward by Brandon Sanderson, where the main character trains to be a pilot, and it got me thinking about ship names. So here are…
10 Fantastic Ship Names
1. Red Dwarf, spaceship as seen in… Red Dwarf, obviously – books and TV series. It’s big. And red… Red dwarf stars are the most numerous type of star in the universe.
2. The Valley Forge, an American Airlines space freighter in 1972 film Silent Running. Not sure if it’s named after the battle of 18 September 1777, or after the location? George Washington and his troops occupied Valley Forge just before Christmas and built log huts – they suffered cold and starvation, which apparently was “suffering as usual”. An evocative name for a ship.
3. The Nutmeg of Consolation, a 20-gun ship in the 14th Aubrey & Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. Aubrey is gifted the ship and names it after one of the sultan’s titles.
4. Kraken’s Kiss, a ship of the Iron Fleet in George R R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire aka Game of Thrones. One of the three fastest ships in Victarion Greyjoy’s fleet.
5. Fate Amenable to Change – a GCU ship in Iain M Banks’s Culture series. Appears in Excession, and is a child ship of the Ethics Gradient.
6. No One Knows What the Dead Think – another Culture ship. This former GOU was previously named Obliterating Angel and appears in Surface Detail.
7. Very Little Gravitas Indeed – yes, we are still with the Culture, because Iain M Banks was a genius at ship names. This ship is a GSV in the novel Use of Weapons.
8. So Much For Subtlety, another GSV, this one appears in The Player of Games.
9. Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill. Our final Iain M Banks entry, this GCU appears in Matter.
10. Big Enough to Kill You, the kitsen ship in Starsight by Brandon Sanderson. The kitsen are tiny foxlike creatures led by Hesho, who is absolutely not a hereditary monarch, merely the leader of a democratic society. With a great ship name.
And an honourable mention goes to Serenity (above), the ship from Firefly, because I love the series (and the film Serenity is pretty good too).
I hope you enjoyed the list. If you’re a fan of the Culture ship names, take a look at the Culture spaceship names wiki. As you may have guessed, I think Iain M Banks was an absolute ship-naming genius.
What do you think? Do you have better suggestions for the best ship names? I’d love to hear your comments 😊
Coming up…
This week’s main newsletter will have reviews of Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward, and The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley.
Cheerio, and happy reading 😊
Vic
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