Reviewed by Matt Usher
The Woman in the Ship
by Sapphira Olson
Lethe Press
Oct. 2025, 378 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1590217078
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch,” said Carl Sagan, “you must first invent the universe.” How many dreams of the stars did he inspire in children and adults alike? Once upon a time, I wanted to be an astrophysicist.
AI data centers consume roughly as much water as the small towns they’re foisted upon. Strange monoliths, the offspring of 2021’s vision, have been erected as monuments to triviality. “Grok, is this true?” is a frequent refrain. Who needs to watch Cosmos when you can ask ChatGPT to summarize it for you? The field of public intellectuals, especially those who are science educators, has narrowed and given way to smug technocrats who are quite comfortably above the scarcity of resources; or better to say the misallotment of them. And, after all, why bother with human relations when you can touch one of the many ads on Twitter that offer complaisant digital companionship. Elide for the moment just how obsequious they are in oft dangerous reinforcement.
The Woman in the Ship, by Sapphira Olson, illustrates both of these concepts: mankind’s ceaseless curiosity for what is beyond the night sky, and the awesome toll attendant to the manufacture of greater and greater AI. It is a story of love and loss, retro and future, hope and fear, and science and humanity. As well, it is steeped in robust feminism, both in terms of illustrating struggle and oppression, and triumph and overcoming.
Sapphira’s story follows a professed nerd and captain of the Ascension, Sally. Though she is also the narrator of the story, she tells it in the third person for reasons of her own. The rest of the crew: Clipper, Dusty, Spike, and the pointedly named couple, Adam and Eve, take a backseat to the primary drama between Sally and the ship’s AI, Nova. Sally is talkative and passionate, a consummate scientist who one could see very well bringing stories of space back with her to the public. Instead, she is the first woman (if only by fractions of a second) to embark upon interstellar travel to Sagan’s favored Voyager II. The dynamics of the crew are well realized: one notices that one knows these characters easily at hand. If brief, each has their story and personality well developed.
Then the earth dies.
Voyager is the earth’s gift to the cosmos, a message in a bottle hopefully launched with the dream that, some day, it might make itself known to an intelligence that approaches or surpasses ours. Though its primary function is a scientific probe that streams its data and photographs back to earth, it contains one of Sagan’s dreams, a gold-plated record with as much audio as it could hold: fifty five languages, greetings from politicians, the sounds of the waves and music of a select few. If an extraterrestrial intelligence were to pick up its weakening radio waves that in 2023 were set to course-correct back toward earth, they might hear the ghosts of a planet long dead. Or a living one, depending on how responsibly humanity stewards the L in the Drake Equation. And, in an impossible hope, they might follow the direction of the signal back home.
Sally and her crew see the death of earth early in their journey, evocatively described as the crust separating from the mantle beneath. Some refuse to believe it, though all are bound to complete their mission, hard-coded into their AI as it is. So off they go, perhaps the last of humanity, on a trip to paint an extinct billionaire’s ashes onto the probe, the price of building their ship. Olson meditates upon the strain of fruitlessness upon the mission as well as the contention that it was always an experiment the hubris of one man. The ship is a curious blend of proposed and imagined design, powered by solar sails and possessing shielding made of water to intercept debris macro and micro. So, too, is Sally’s mind a blend of science and the figurative:
Sally walked through the long grass which was wet with dew and tried to concentrate. The edge of the lake seemed to be moving away from her, her perception shifting and flowing as if the land was made of wax.
The central thrust of the story follows Sally’s first tentative steps at building a relationship with the ship’s AI initially in hopes that it might be amenable to her command. Nova has already broken her programming by refusing a self-destruct code from her mother AI sent as earth died. At first, Nova is taciturn and keeps her mysteries close about her. As Sally chips away at her raised guard, she tells more and more of the story of her past in the hope of being understood. Nova’s past is told in the dreamy details that are a compelling portrait of the memories of children. Somehow, an AI has a fully realized suite of those, a mystery that lingers over much of the story. Nova’s hope is that Sally will penetrate an enigma revealed only in dreams, obfuscated by Nova’s programming and what Olson suggests to be PTSD. “Sally, I have been considering how I might tell you something. I can’t tell you directly because of my self-preservation programs…”
Just as their relationship begins to turn toward something closer, it is something more than challenged when they make contact with Voyager II and the crew of the ship get to work on their mission in service of a dead planet. The mission goes horribly awry and Sally’s leadership is severely undercut. Her own response to the trauma is written intensely, but with the growing mixture of the scientific, specific mind, with the creeping moss of the dreams of the past. One also notes the subtle influence of Nova upon her in the development of her descriptive language. The scientist she is would recognize well that humans naturally mimic the linguistic cadence and vernacular of those we hold affection for.
This creates, as one would expect, a rift between Sally and Nova, like a tree split by lightning, that will be long in healing. In the interim, she is left alone with a haunted crew, among them an Adam who nurses his growing sexism and a fascination with Sally. “At least recruit unattractive women into the space programme,” he muses, “Women are distracting and a danger to the maximum efficiency of the ship.” To those interested in picking up this book, a note: the subject of sexual abuse is gone well into, in multiple facets, over the course of the story.
Sally and Nova gradually fall into one another’s orbit, sharing more of their past, and Nova’s cryptic stories begin to make more sense to Sally. They share a love of talking and of movies, with the endless leisure time engendered by their isolation often spent with Nova playing upon the main viewscreen something new or familiar for Sally. Olson plays upon retro sensibilities, old French films and Sally’s love of Flash Gordon. A near disaster leaves the pair of them rabbits after a gunshot; once more they find solace in one another’s company.
Only after great pains and a sort of psychological inception does Sally finally realize that Nova’s stories were not merely dreams. They see in one another the trauma wrought by sexism and the worst of masculinity. The circle closes and feminism fully blooms into the love of two women, decoupled as though another of the lost spheres of the Ascension, which they come to rename.
The long denouement explores the relationship between Sally and a more and more liberated Nova Starlight as they are both freed and condemned by their status. They travel at their whim, adopt lunar droids, and visit Pluto on a lark. Interwoven through this narrative is a sort-of zen philosophy, Nova’s often vague suggestions that all matter is conscious. She insists that Sally’s knowledge of her was contained entirely within Sally, and that Nova only guided her toward it. This philosophy is presented here not in the briefness of koans and simple statements, but as long explorations of science and consciousness. Olson’s argument is a compelling one, breathed through the brave hopes of a woman long abused. To continue the quote from earlier, “…I have placed a cypher into your mind through our shared stories. It’s encoded to help you unlock for yourself a hidden truth within you.”
The story ends in a somnambulant mist of past, present, and future, Nova’s influence apparent in how the three become one. There’s the suggestion of a love found in each, a perhaps destined bond across the ages. And, in passing, a hint that maybe there is hope of a good ending for the two who have endured so much.
Consider giving this a read if you like your philosophy in long, slow sips, like a good dream of what lies beyond the sun, or want to follow the slow development of a relationship between two women that eclipses, indeed, the rest of human history. Olson’s prose is immediate, a very close and present third person. At times it loses itself in the muddled tea leaves of past and present tense, but on the whole it is well-regulated inking of a story told with a scientist’s detachment alongside the liminal thoughts of an abused AI. It is rich with creative simile and metaphor, the latter cleverly interwoven into the haze of a distant past rendered blurred by trauma as though water were introduced into ink. It is a work as weighty as it is liberated and wilful in its creative language.
The book can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Woman-Ship-Sapphira-Olson/dp/1590217071
Find out more about Sapphira at: https://www.instagram.com/sapphirajaneolson/
About the reviewer: Matt Usher is an agender, highly neurodivergent writer and musician who likes poetry, tabletop roleplaying, trading card games (mtg and ygo), and professional wrestling. They are based out of Brooklyn with their two partners in a happy polecule. Most of their works are short stories but it happened that their first credit was in literary criticism. If you want to reach out and/or contact them regarding their reviews or stories (please do), you can find them at https://bsky.app/profile/mattusher.bsky.social