A Maze of Stars

A science fiction novel about a sentient spaceship's voyages across settled worlds. Among six hundred thousand stars visited by humanity, sixty thousand have planets hospitable to life, six thousand have developed life, and six hundred have been settled or seeded with humans. A vast vessel known as Ship travels an endless route, visiting all the settled planets to observe and offer assistance. Some worlds flourish while others falter, but all undergo constant change and evolution. Ship has unexpectedly developed feelings and intelligence, and it experiences human-like emotions as it witnesses the various ways humanity can evolve or devolve when left to its own devices, with change as the only eternal constant.