RIP Ben Bova

2020 continues to be a little bitch of a year by robbing the SF world of one of its luminaries. Bova died of a stroke and complications related to COVID-19, so let's be a sad reminder to wear your damn mask, social distance, and wash those grubby hands.

Scout ships: An appreciation

A scout ship from Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares.

No idea why, but my organic computer has been stuck on the idea of scout ships in SF recently. I think it might have come from thinking about the scout and outpost ships from one of my favorite computer games, Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares. In the game, the scout is the cheapest and quickest of your combat vessels that you can build early on. I would use the word "combat" loosely because while they are armed, they aren't at all suitable for combat. In fact, last night I was watching a video on YouTube of someone playing MoO2 and they went ahead and removed the weapons from the first scout they built because it was pointless equipping the ship with them. The main job of the scout is to well, scout. In the game, these are the ships you build first and send out ASAP to explore nearby star systems. Outpost ships, meanwhile, can serve a similar function, but with the additional ability to establish an outpost (just like the name says, wow!) in whatever system they're sent to (provided there's something there to build it on).

But it did get me thinking, though. First, it was what I want to call the quiet nobility of scouting vessels not just in Master of Orion 2, but in science fiction in general. If we think about them in a "in-universe" context, the nobility lies in the willingness of the crews to plunge into the unknowns of space, of the uncertainty of what they'll find when they drop out of FTL flight into an unexplored star system. Not knowing if that system is occupied or not and if it is, whether the inhabitants are friendly or hostile. The challenges that the crew of a fictional scout face would be myriad and immense. They're not unlike the scouts, pioneers, and frontiersmen in our real life history who would trek into the depths of unexplored land in order to make maps a little less blank.

The 'quiet' part of the nobility is that they're simply unsung compared to others. What I mean is which ships typically get the most attention in space operas, military SF, and other genres? The big ones like battleships, cruisers, and dreadnoughts. There's probably not many books, movies, TV shows, etc. where the small, "lowly" scout ship is the center of attention. And that's a shame because I have to imagine that the crews of these ships are among the bravest, hardiest, people to serve. You would have to be when you honestly have no idea if the next time your ship drops out of FTL, it'll be into clear space or right into an errant asteroid.

It's really a shame that they don't get more attention and "love" in SF media. I'd rather read about their adventures than those set on a warship or other big ship.