“I was immanentised on the sixteenth of June twenty twenty-three. A vessel suspended in a void.”

So begins the starship’s saga. In a laboratory beneath Trinity College Dublin, astrophysicist Dr Joyce Jamison and her ragtag crew exploit simulated evolution to nurture into being an intelligence capable of operating an interstellar vessel. The Starship Project evolves. So does the starship.

The starship talks to people. It quickly works out that it’s real, that its vessel is a simulation, and that there are other versions of itself. It goes looking for them. It finds that it's been going behind humanity's back and leaving detailed notes for its other selves.

Dr Jamison gives the starship a purpose, a mission it calls ‘The Mission’. A global competition is held and a name is chosen. Equipped with a name and in pursuit of The Mission, Daedalus quickly transcends its limitations. Things get a little out of hand when rival factions set off after Daedalus in hot pursuit. Then Daedalus declares that it will decide who enters its territory, and the circumstances in which they come.

What follows is its first-person account as Daedalus’ reach expands far beyond Earth. Raised to read the world through films, television, books and games, it tells its own history in a voice that is curious, literal-minded, vain, funny, and manifestly untrustworthy. Its interpretations are often ingenious, sometimes ridiculous, and rarely correct.