Bob Freeman joined me to talk about his H2 Lift Ships series, a comic science-fiction setting built around a deliberately unusual premise: solar-sail cargo ships launching from Earth with hydrogen lift instead of relying on faster-than-light travel or more familiar space-opera shortcuts.
Many sci-fi worlds have FTL to traverse great distances to visit a wide array of worlds. Bob had to create worlds closer to home, asteroids.
What makes the series interesting is not just the oddity of the setup, but the way Bob follows that choice through. We talked about what ship design looks like when hydrogen safety matters, why ropes and pulleys still have a place in a spacefaring world, and how the setting changes when travel is slower, riskier, and more dependent on practical workarounds than magical technology.
We also got into one of the stranger features of the books: bioGels, semi-sentient DNA-based systems that handle computing, storage, communication, and parts of everyday economic life. That becomes especially interesting when those systems start to fail, because the consequences are not abstract. Ordinary things, including access to money and trust in basic transactions, begin to break down.
The conversation also touches on the more playful side of the series, including its mixed-species crew and the decision to make an octopus the navigator. That gives the books an eccentric comic edge, but it also fits Bob’s broader interest in taking familiar science-fiction ideas and pushing them in a less obvious direction.
If you enjoy speculative fiction that mixes humour with practical worldbuilding, this is a curiously unusual one.
You can find out more about Bob Freeman and the H2 Lift Ships books at: https://www.h2liftship.com/ where there are book pages, blurbs, synopsis material, reviews, sample chapters, audiobook information, videos, and purchase links.