---
id: sfoc-worlds-sleeper-ship
title: "Sleeper Ship"
primary_class: worlds
primary_domain: origin-lineage
secondary_domains: [technology-infrastructure, civilization-ecology]
material_modes: [science-fiction, original-synthesis]
version: 1.0.0
---

# Sleeper Ship

> **the sleeper ship wayfinder.** Sleeper Ship brings the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif into focus. It operates as a place, environment, frontier, or constructed reality and asks how inheritance, transmission, rupture, and the authority claimed by beginnings alter practical choice.

## Origin

The Oracle receives Sleeper Ship from geography, exploration, memory-place, and speculative worldbuilding. That receipt includes a duty to preserve creators, communities, dates, and disagreement. Because the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action, provenance work must trace the earliest attested form, each handoff, and what later tellers added.

## What It Is

Sleeper Ship brings the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif into focus. It operates as a place, environment, frontier, or constructed reality and asks how inheritance, transmission, rupture, and the authority claimed by beginnings alter practical choice. In the Oracle it is classified as Worlds & Places, while its evidence layers determine how literal, historical, fictional, experiential, or symbolic a particular interpretation may be.

## Cultural History

The card tracks when Sleeper Ship crossed from specialist context into common imagination. That crossing altered both vocabulary and stakes. At collective scale, the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif gathers identities around belonging, exclusion, migration, and shared place; this matters because an origin story can preserve obligation or turn age into unearned authority.

## Claim and Evidence Layers

  ### literal-and-empirical

- **Claim layer:** literal-and-empirical
- **Material context:** science-fiction
- **Evidence state:** fictional
- **Summary:** Sleeper Ship has a fictional literal or empirical layer. That designation applies only to the bounded claims supported by the listed sources.
- **Sources:** sf-encyclopedia, isfdb

### cultural-and-historical

- **Claim layer:** cultural-and-historical
- **Material context:** science-fiction, original-synthesis
- **Evidence state:** documented-historical
- **Summary:** The cited cultural record documents at least one lineage, use, or reception context for Sleeper Ship; it does not certify every later claim.
- **Sources:** sf-encyclopedia, isfdb

### symbolic-and-divinatory

- **Claim layer:** symbolic-and-divinatory
- **Material context:** original-synthesis
- **Evidence state:** symbolic
- **Summary:** The Oracle uses Sleeper Ship as a reflective symbol, never as proof that its literal or causal claims are true.
- **Sources:** original-synthesis

## Oracle

- **Essence:** Sleeper Ship brings the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif into focus. It operates as a place, environment, frontier, or constructed reality and asks how inheritance, transmission, rupture, and the authority claimed by beginnings alter practical choice.
- **Archetype:** the sleeper ship wayfinder
- **Gift:** find a proportionate action through trace the earliest attested form, each handoff, and what later tellers added.
- **Shadow:** protecting the preferred interpretation by moving every test beyond reach.
- **Guidance:** Do not ask Sleeper Ship to solve every scale at once within inheritance, transmission, rupture, and the authority claimed by beginnings. Work at the nearest point where consent and feedback are possible while the pattern sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action. Use this guidance where the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action; keep visible that an origin story can preserve obligation or turn age into unearned authority.
- **Healing / integration:** Map who acts, knows, benefits, bears risk, may refuse, and can appeal in the situation evoked by Sleeper Ship. Review the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif through inheritance, transmission, rupture, and the authority claimed by beginnings, remembering that the card sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action.
- **Question:** What is the smallest reversible action that could clarify the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif? Answer by testing how the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action against inheritance, transmission, rupture, and the authority claimed by beginnings.

## Meanings

### Psychological

Psychologically, Sleeper Ship directs attention toward the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif. It can organize uncertainty, but its preferred explanation should remain revisable. A grounded check for the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif is to trace the earliest attested form, each handoff, and what later tellers added, especially where the pattern sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action.

### Social

A community may use Sleeper Ship to preserve memory, coordinate action, or mark identity. The Oracle also asks who bears the costs of that cohesion. In shared life, the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif gathers identities around belonging, exclusion, migration, and shared place. Test that specific the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif pattern by asking people to trace the earliest attested form, each handoff, and what later tellers added.

### Spiritual

the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif may be held as mystery through Sleeper Ship. Mystery remains open; it does not require an enemy, hierarchy, or exemption from care. In symbolic practice, the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif acts as sanctuary, exile, underworld, promised land, or threshold; keep in view that an origin story can preserve obligation or turn age into unearned authority.

### Technological

The technological question is who gets capability without inheriting equal risk. Trace the earliest attested form, each handoff, and what later tellers added. When the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif becomes a capability, it depends on infrastructure for access, survival, sensing, and maintenance. Verify the implementation of the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif by asking participants to trace the earliest attested form, each handoff, and what later tellers added.

### Political

Where Sleeper Ship promises order, ask whose uncertainty is being reduced and whose freedom is being converted into someone else’s assurance. When the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif becomes governance, it makes borders, jurisdiction, ownership, and environmental burden visible. Make authority over the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif answerable by requiring decision-makers to trace the earliest attested form, each handoff, and what later tellers added.

## Divination

- **Gift state:** Sleeper Ship upright restores context around inheritance, transmission, rupture, and the authority claimed by beginnings. Use the larger view to find a neglected point of agency. The capacity within the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif is strongest when the inheritance is visible without making ancestry destiny, even as the pattern sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action.
- **Shadow state:** A shadow reading asks whether an origin story can preserve obligation or turn age into unearned authority. Find the material mechanism beneath the dramatic account as the pattern sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action. To keep the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif from escalating, trace the earliest attested form, each handoff, and what later tellers added, because the pattern sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action.
- **Threshold state:** The card becomes timely when the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif can no longer remain symbolic alone because it is shaping real permissions, risks, or relationships. Operationally, the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action; the reader should trace the earliest attested form, each handoff, and what later tellers added.
- **Practical move:** Map who acts, knows, benefits, bears risk, may refuse, and can appeal in the situation evoked by Sleeper Ship. Review the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif through inheritance, transmission, rupture, and the authority claimed by beginnings, remembering that the card sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action.

## Game and Story Function

- setting
- route-node
- resource-environment

**Story seed:** A rival explanation for Sleeper Ship predicts the same event for a different reason. The story turns on a test neither side can control. The world of the story must show how the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif sets the affordances, dangers, distances, and resources of action and why an origin story can preserve obligation or turn age into unearned authority.

## Relationships

- edge--assessed-through-shared-source-lens--sfoc-worlds-company-town--sfoc-worlds-sleeper-ship
- edge--same-class-as--sfoc-worlds-simulation-layer--sfoc-worlds-sleeper-ship
- edge--same-class-as--sfoc-worlds-sleeper-ship--sfoc-worlds-smart-city
- edge--shares-inquiry-domain-with--sfoc-artifacts-beacon--sfoc-worlds-sleeper-ship
- edge--shares-inquiry-domain-with--sfoc-artifacts-stargate-address--sfoc-worlds-sleeper-ship
- edge--shares-inquiry-domain-with--sfoc-systems-geofence--sfoc-worlds-sleeper-ship

## Visual Direction

Sleeper Ship visualized as the sleeper motif meeting the ship motif: a navigable horizon, gateway, or terrain mark with clear depth and no scenic illustration clutter. The art must be original, text-free, square, rounded-corner enamel with one immediately legible silhouette.

## Safety and Integration

No elevated safety flag. Keep claims and metaphor visibly distinct.

## Sources and Research Notes

- Source IDs: sf-encyclopedia, isfdb, original-synthesis
- Research note: Which earliest reliable source fixes the modern meaning of Sleeper Ship? Which communities use Sleeper Ship differently, and what changes across those contexts? What evidence would distinguish the leading literal explanations associated with Sleeper Ship?
