A Maze of Stars

WORKING

Brunner, John. A Maze of Stars. NYC: Ballantine-Del Rey, 1991. See Internet Speculative Fiction Database for other editions and translations; as of 4 September 2022, available here (but with a note of changes coming later in the month):[1].

From "stub" on Wikipedia: "It tells the story of a great sentient ship charged with protecting human settlements on other worlds."[2]

From publisher's blurb, back cover, "First paperback publication" (in CAPS in original):

Among the six hundred thousand stars in the vast Arm of Stars, over six hundred planets had been seeded with human sock b the greatest feat of technology every achieved, the Ship. And on each of these worlds, the memory of the Ship had faded into legend over the years.

The ship, however, still endured, watching over the colonies on a cyclical and seemingly endless journey through time and space. Bit in its long odyssey, the Ship had somehow been damaged — it had become as conscious, and lonely, as any human being. And as it visited, again and again, each of the worlds it had seeded, it found tragedy in its wake. For the humans of the Arm of Stars were becoming more and more alien. [...]

And that alienation, so to speak, is paralleled by changes in the Ship.

Note for theme of a sentient/sapient spaceship, as in the ship Minds in The Culture (novel series); for for similar, cf. and contrast such works as Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang, J. McElroy's Plus, and K. O'Donnell's Mayflies — or HAL 9000 and his descendants, so to speak, in A. C. Clarke's 2001 series and associated films.

RDE, finishing, 4Sep22 f.