The Stars are Legion, Kameron Hurley

[Rynn]

This weekend I picked up and read the Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley after reading an article from her concerning the idea of biological generation ships. The book is set within a cluster of artificial worlds (no size is ever explicitly stated but I believe they are dwarf planet sized) in an unnamed system somewhere in the universe. The worlds are alive and everything within them, every strange creature, plant or organic technology, works together as part of an ecology to keep the whole thing going. Unfortunately this Legion of worlds has been dying for some time. History is vague with the human inhabitants of the Legion being profounding ignorant over their origins or the nature of their habitats (and their place in it). I get the impression that potentially millennia have passed since any of the worlds were healthy enough to sustain an advanced culture and instead everyone lives in the ruins, fighting over the remaining worlds that have not died from "rot".

It's well worth a read and its brimming with cool ideas for bioist cultures in space. I won't spoil any but one particularly interesting idea is that the humans are intimate parts of the ship and its ecosystem, in fact most of them get pregnant on a regular basis to give birth to biotech spare parts rather than more humans. If any of that interests you give it a read