I, Starship

A Space Opera

De: Scott Bartlett

Narrado por: Mark Boyett

As a Marine, Henry Morgan would have said it was more likely he’d die from enemy fire than from being struck by a flying lawnmower while at a baseball game.

But it was the lawnmower that ended up taking him out.

A century later, Henry wakes up as a reconstituted intelligence, and is promptly drafted to be the governing AI for America’s first military starship. After decades of model-trained AIs wreaking havoc across the globe, humanity is ready to try something a little more…human.

Henry is perfect. For one thing, as a reconstituted intelligence, he has no rights and can be forced to do the bidding of the powers that be. For another, he’s the only Heritage Mind™ with any military experience that survived the Great Power Surge of 2072.

So, Henry’s it.

Blastoff, good Henry! Our hopes and dreams go with you. Oh, and while you’re at it, could you take a look at the aliens setting up shop in our asteroid belt? They seem to be…multiplying.

Download I, Starship now and grab the edge of your seat for this bold new space opera.

©2024 Scott Bartlett (P)2025 Scott Bartlett

It's Stargate Universe again!!!

The narration is fantastic as usual from Mark Boyett. What do I mean by it's Stargate Universe? Well that show should have been called something else as it was certainly not part of the the Stargate "universe". Stargate teams are the best of the best but the team in universe was a bunch of back stabbing, spouse cheating, incompetent miserable people. That is exactly what the crew of I, Starship is and that makes it very hard to get through. Henry the main character is a Marine that dies and has his brain copied as the ships AI but we are lead to believe that he is sentient as real person. For reasons that are NEVER explain almost everyone treat him like dog crap especially the captain. There are so many things that irritate me about this story but one of the biggest is what a gutless pushover Henry is. He is definitely not like any Marine I ever knew or served with.

The book is worth listening to just the great job Mark Boyett does, I would not have finished it other wise.

naration

last 2 hours was sit in my truck and finish it time, reminded me of the lost fleet action

Good idea.

I liked the premise. Character development was not balanced. One adventure to the next.

Run-of-the-mill hodge-podge of Sci-Fi tropes

Scott Bartlet needs to study physics and inertia in the absence of friction.
The story has a nice start, pretty unusual in its setting, but soon devolves I a collage of “borrowed” ideas, taken from far better book series like the Bobiverse.
The characters are absolutely not realistic, being mostly single-faced, with no nuance or development.
Scarcely plausible plot twists are just annoying.
The only redeeming grace, imho, is the transposition of Taffy 3 epic battle against the Imperial Japanese Navy during the battle of Samar.
Of course the outcome is different, but I’ve found the similarities at least enticing, unlike the rest of the books.

has potential

not a bad start! I hope the main characters become a bit more fleshed out and hopefully the ship becomes formidable instead of earth's pinto at the F1 race with the other ailens.

Outstanding

loved this story, and the narrator did an excellent job with all the voices giving each character their own feel

Historical...

Almost word for word Commander Earnest Evans when the USS Johnston was commissioned. The entire battle at The Seat is a reenactment of Battle of Lete Gulf. Although I appreciate the hat tip it was almost exact.

Even the Captain losing fingers and the Chaper name. I recommend, "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors"

The author shows a lot of promise.

A lot of overly moody bullys picking on the nice guy. I really wanted to like it. The storyline shows so much promise. It reads like it was written in the 1970s.

So much anger from such ignorant people as the best the earth has to offer???

I understand that the purpose of an author writing a book such as this is to elicit emotion however I just spent 90% of the time, possibly more, being angry and frustrated at the injustices against the protagonist brought on by his own crew and nearly every single other character of the story.

Even those claiming to have the protagonists best interests at heart and those who have occasionally shown a small bit of kindness are still, and unnecessarily so, completely hurtful, rude, and degrading to the main character for no apparent reason at all. To rally your reader behind the main character only to constantly degrade the protagonist is akin to degrading your reader, and for what purpose??

Mistrust for something you generally consider to be an AI and nothing more, with some unknown background that may have caused the mistrust… okay, I can understand it in a general “use your imagination” kind of way. Mistrust or dread for something that can happen as a result of an untested consciousness program… sure. But what about the chance that the consciousness (a reconstituted mind) goes further than simply a computer program? Is that even considered? It doesn’t cost anything to be kind, especially when someone can value even the smallest kindness so highly and it can mean the difference between mission success or failure. Military commanders know this. I know that the military doesn’t use “kindness” to accomplish its goals but all out degradation, belittlement, and continuous demeaning abuse, I have a hard time with.

Aside from that, for a Captain and crew that are sent on such a valuable mission to humanity, how are they so terrible!? (Mostly in reference to the Captain). The Captain is an idiot. For someone thought of so highly, so successful in his career, and, once again, to be relied on so heavily to save humankind, he is abrasive, unlikeable, detrimental to crew morale, and, most importantly, makes absolutely terrible strategic and combat decisions. Almost everything out of the Captains mouth makes him look like a fool and completely incompetent in his position, and right in front of the crew no less. The crew are supposed to be “the best of the best” and yet they are cowards and over-emotional… while in the military. Then we have a Captain that demeans the crew even when he is implementing their ideas while openly stating that he doesn’t have any better ideas. It just doesn’t make any sense.

I want so badly for these books to be good however if, as a reader and target audience, my emotions through most of the story are anger and frustration, how does that make the story enjoyable and for a reader to want more? It just doesn’t.

Honestly, the best part of both of books 1 & 2 is probably the last 1-2 hours of the narration where the main character wasn’t berrated constantly for absolutely no reason (and where the Captain didn’t have much to say except “do it.”)

The performance of the narrator, Mark Boyett, was incredible, as he is usually. Typically, any book narrated by Mark Boyett, I would recommend to other readers. Mr. Boyett is an outstanding narrator.

Ultimately, I’m surprised at my negative reaction to these books so far. Usually I enjoy books from Scott Bartlett. I’m not sure what happened to reflect so much anger in his books, or what his goal was, honestly. It felt as if his intention was to alienate the reader along with the main character. Okay, so now what?

To be honest, I will read Part 3 simply to see what the point of all of this was… but I have to say one again, the only emotions elicited from the first two books were anger and frustration. Not emotions I would hope to rely on for too long in a story - It gets exhausting and then you turn these same emotions toward the author. Hopefully Part 3 and onward is better.

Starts slow but it picks up

The story gets better and better as it moves along. Never quite develops the main character.