Speaking of David Weber, I’m a huge fan of the Shrike LACs (Light Attack Craft, the equivilant of PT Boats) as fielded by the Royal Manticoran Navy at the Second Battle of Hancock. In a time when common strategic thought regarded LACs as underarmed, underprotected, and largely worthless against capital ships, the Manticorans designed a type of LAC that relied on a top-of-the-line stealth system to sneak up on enemy ships, and a Battlecruiser grade beam cannon and swarm tactics to pound on their enemies. At Hancock, a wing of these things tore a squadron of Havenite Battleships and their escorts to shreds, without the Havenites ever managing to figure out what they were even being attacked by until much later. Float like a butterfly, sting like a cruise missile.
Also, I like the EarthForce Omega Destroyer from Babylon 5. What it lacked in technological superiority, it made up with in raw firepower and attitude. A combination between an aircraft carrier and a battleship, these things could hold their own against (or defeat) anything short of a Minbari War Cruiser. Aesthetic considerations? Let’s just say these things had a face only a mother could love… on Payday!
“Star Wars” has unfortunately been marred by overexposure and a lot of horrible sequels, but the original film really did have some wonderful design touches, and I think its biggest appeal was the universe looked, well, lived in. So many other sci-fi universes - most of them up to that point - were sanitized and gave the appearance that everything was made of Tupperware. Star Wars presented a universe that looked old and used and like people actually lived in it. When you heard the backstory, that the Republic had been around for thousands of years, you could believe it.
The Millennium Falcon was the best visual example of this. It looked, frankly, like the sci-fi equivalent of a transport truck with guns welded to it. It was old and a veteran of Christ knows how many battles and tight scrapes. Records of the modifications made to it have doubtlessly been lost, if in fact anyone bothered to write them down. You could believe that ship had a few light years on it. As preposterous as the physics of Star Wars is, that ship was perhaps the most believable ship I’ve ever seen in sci-fi, a cramped little tin can used by a half-assed criminal eking out an existence on whatever hellholes he could find where the cops didn’t know who he was. It looks like it’s had pathy repairs done to it. Maybe it would work on any given day and maybe not, but it was built really well so it would survive.
By comparison, the various models of “USS Enterprise” just don’t look to me like humans live in them. They’re all conceptually awesome and externally fabulous, especially the mighty NCC-1701-E version that takes the traditional “Star Trek saucer-and-engines” look and actually makes it look like a battleship, something a great star empire really would send in flying the flag to kick twelve different kinds of ass; on the outside, that is a ship you’re best off avoiding because it looks like it will seriously fuck you up. But inside, they all look like meeting rooms in a new office building, carpeted and beige and sterile and absurd. After years of use they still look like a decorating show just walked through. Even people’s bedrooms don’t look like bedrooms; they should have shit strewn all over the place but instead they all look like show rooms at IKEA.
Many sci-fi films since then have used Star Wars as the inspiration for a lived-in universe; “Serenity” from Firefly is just a bigger Falcon, for instance (Joss Whedon has said the Falcon partially inspired the idea for the show) and lots of other sci-fi universes since have chosen a gritty, realistic feel.
My first choice is still the TARDIS, and I don’t think that after all these posts I need to explain why.
Sure, Gay Deceiver has a lot going for her, but she also starred in Number of the Beast, which is a big mark against her. If we’re going to go with a Heinlein ship, I’d much prefer 'Dorable Dora (after whom the computer on which I’m typing is named).
Another favorite of mine is the Lying Bastard, from Ringworld. Absolutely not a single weapon of any sort on her, I swear! It’s just purest coincidence that she has the capability to open fifteen different kinds of whupass on anything she might encounter.
I’ll second the Shrike LACs as being cool, but I still prefer the good ol’ battlecruiser Nike. Armed to the teeth, and fast enough to run from the few things she can’t kill. Plus, unlike the LACs, she has the advantage of being hyper-capable, which I consider a must-have in any SF ship.
And finally, for a retro touch, let me be the first to nominate Doc Smith’s Skylark. You’ve got to love machine guns with total-conversion bullets, and five foot thick armor of a material 500 times the strength of steel has to help your sense of security.
Well, there’s the Culture ships, folks. Like I said, I’ve got a big stick Battleplates. As in, continental plate size, and real high tech, like you get on the other side of a singularity.
For those whao want to know what the gay deceiver looks like; nobody has a clue. However, some fan of the books used his Lego collection to make a model on how it could look.
I don’t recall Culture having anything called a Battleplate. I’ve only heard the term used in the webcomic Schlock Mercenary, what I took my username from. I should have added them to my list, maybe.
I considered it, but Taa II edged it out for being even bigger, or at least bulkier.
Although it we’re going for large and gaudy, and uniquely equipped, in the vehicle department,
at the end of Niven’s Ringworld’s Children, the Ringworld protectors have re-engineered the Ringworld’s superconducting meteor defense grid into a mesh that supports the Quantum II hyperdrive, making the whole freaking Ringworld into one of the two fastest vehicles in that Universe. Nothing else can catch it; only the Long Shot can keep up with it. By numerous multiples of C.
Cool, I would love it, but we have had posters mention entire worlds and Ring Worlds already.
Of course NYC would provide, culture, Broadway, the Bronx Zoo, A subway series everyday .
K-2001 Raider Command
best toy vehicle ever*, and cross-over to the best comic book ever.
(* OK except for the good stuff made by Bandai back in the day )
How about the Seedship from Tuf Voyaging? Enormous, with the capablities of a battleship and enough bio-engineering equipment to grow an army from scratch in hours, terraform worlds, or engineer plagues-- and it’s user friendly enough that one person can run the whole thing without training. That was some ship. Did give the owner a bit of a god complex, but hey…
Yeah, always like capatain Nemo’s submarine (Disney version). But I also liked those little capsule cars from Woody Allen’s “SLEEPER”-and the noise they made was cool. I tend to agree, spaceships (as envisioned by Victorian writers0 were much more interesting.
.