sci-fi series recommendation
I've finished the "Old Man's War" series from John Scalzi. It was great!
Can you recommend any other good sci-fi series playing in space for my next read?
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Heeyyy, I did not expect that to blow up like this! Thanks for all the recommendations.
Here is a summary of the mentioned books / series (in case someone is also searching for a new good book)
The expanse
unfortunately, I've already watched the series. I was not aware that the story originated from a book (well, books). Is this a problem? Do the books have substantially more story than the serie?
This one, all day long!
I think it'll take you at least two days to read all nine books.
Hahaha you sir underestimate my ability to read slow!
I actually do read slow and I’m ok with that
Their new series is really good too, but in a totally different way than the expanse. I highly recommend it!
Politics in The Expanse and bureaucracy in the Captives War. Too bad it’s so short, only a trilogy.
I love the way they try to describe stuff given only having our perspective.
Not-turtles, night drinkers, nothing is what it seems. The Expanse is more space centric than The Captives War though.
milowda!
It's older, but Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama is one I've read several times.
There are a couple of sequel books that are kind of partially written by Clarke, but do expand the story and characters quite a bit.
I read them all years ago, but opted to skip the sequels on a recent re-read, but my wife actually prefers the sequels for the characters and story development.
No disrespect to your wife, but the Rama sequels are fucking terrible.
My secret shame is that I lowkey love the Rama sequels, though I fully acknowledge that they are political soap operas in space and tonally absolutely nothing like the original.
The Bobbiverse Series
[](We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-legion-we-are-bob)
Came here to make sure someone reccommended this.
Children of Time/Ruin/Memory/Strife - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Trigger Warning: I have pretty serious arachnophobia and it took me several weeks of interruptions to be comfortable reading this series.
I just read them all over the past few weeks and enjoyed the series! So +1 recommendation :)
If you like hard eco-political sci-fi, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is one I still think about often, and I read it about 20 years ago now. Bonus: if you like it then he's written a whole lot of other great stuff.
Second these.
For his other books, Aurora and 2312 are both space heavy.
I recently re-read Aurora. It's incredible, maybe my favorite of his.
I've not yet read 2312 because when I find an author or director I like I want to spread out reading/watching them. I hate the idea that one day I'll have read all of KSR's books. I think it's time to dive in though.
I kind of do that too. I read the Mars series for the first time a few years ago, and read 2312 and Aurora back to back a few months ago. NY 2140 will probably be my next one of his.
I've also had The Martians (short stories from the Mars series) on my desk for a couple of years now, and I read it in short spurts here and there.
I still need to get back to that one and read the third one. Red Mars was the first adult level reading book I purchased as a kid and it was beyond my reading level. I kept that book for 20 years before reading it in my 30s. I read the first two and they are good, but very dense books. Eventually I’ll get back to the third.
Foundation and the broader universe by Isaac Asimov is a good one. Robots, foundations, and they empire series, as well as some stand alone stories all make one large story arc together.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Hands down the best 5 part trilogy in Sci Fi
hmm, interesting. I've only heard that Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is the only story where the movie is better than the book. Therefore, I've never considered to read it. Maybe I should give it a try nonetheless...
I was skeptical, but I just started And Another Thing (part 6), and so far it feels like Adams work, and the HGG universe.
Have to see how it plays out, but I really love the first 5.
Peter F Hamilton: Nights Dawn Trilogy
Ian M Banks: Culture Series
+1 for The Culture. If op liked Old Man's War they'll love The Culture.
Not necessarily. I loved OMW but something about the Culture novels just rubbed me the wrong way. I read the first two books and gave up. They were okay, but I didn't enjoy them enough to want to read any more.
I found that Banks’ writing can be… boring? There is a certain simplicity in it that can rub me the wrong way.
This should not be a reason NOT to read the books, as I found them to be simple reads with amazing concepts.
Consider Phlebas is a great read as it’s told from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with the Culture and is exposed to it at a distance.
Other books in the series put you front and centre in the Culture and it can be overwhelming.
Some of his books don’t even mention the culture, but you know it’s operating under a veil in front of the reader the entire time.
It’s all really quite genius.
I didn't find Banks' writing to be particularly boring. The plot in Consider Phlebas was interesting enough for me to finish the book, at least.
The Player of Games was a big letdown, though. Similarly to the first book, the plot was interesting enough. But by time I got to the end, I realized: I just wasn't having fun. I didn't particularly care about the protagonist, and I wasn't impressed with the way he was characterized. Just, overall...meh. It doesn't resonate for me.
I’ve read most of the series and I would say this is my experience with half of it.
Some books are bangers others are flops. But overall the entire thing is worth reading for the universe he presents.
Hmm, it has been a while since I read them. Maybe I should put the next one in the series on hold at the library.
So. To save you some time, none of them need to be read in order (although Consider Phlebas is the best starting point), the books I recommend are:
Use of Weapons, Excession, Look to Windward, Matter, Surface Detail
…. Wait. You know, I just looked at a list of the Culture novels and realized I HAVE read them all except Surface Detail(which I am currently reading and enjoy) and honestly Player of Games is the weakest of the lot followed by Hydrogen Sonata.
You really did stop reading right as it gets really good. Use of Weapons and Excession especially open up the world and really start pushing cool concepts.
Night's Dawn was so immensely frustrating. He revisits some of the same ideas in later books to much better effect IMO and skips over some of the terrible stuff.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler The biological starships were great but then we have the ghost of Al Capone possessing a body and leading a war against unpossessed humanity? That was fucking awful. :::
The Culture is nothing but gold though. Recently revisited Inversions and it's still amazing.
To each their own, I enjoyed the trilogy as an excellent mixture of drastically hard sci-fi mixed with delusional fantasy.
I do agree that he perfected concepts in further books, but also found he didn’t particularly deviate from those ideas in truly meaningful ways.
For example: The Great North Road did an excellent job at mixing portals and biological science fiction, but that concepts like brain computer interfaces remained largely the same and too familiar despite being a distinctly separate universe. It felt repeated and old hat.
Good book nonetheless, I was just a bit disappointed he rehashed the same ideas without deviation or too much expansion.
I read Great North Road and several other of his books before I read Nights Dawn, so those "repeated" ideas added to my frustration with the trilogy. Had I read them the other way around, I bet that would changed my opinion some.
Have you read Exodus yet? I have it on my shelf but have been in the mood for shorter reads lately.
I haven’t, but I’ve also found that I prefer his earlier works. The Void Trilogy is another good opera.
I’ll tack on here: if OP doesn’t want to commit to 2500 pages of trilogy: the first book I read by Hamilton was Fallen Dragon.
It uses some concepts familiar with his other works, but presents them in very different ways, and the overall novel is shortish.
The use of semi biological power armor throughout is honestly super cool.
I'm quite fond of the Teixcalaan (don't ask me how to pronounce that) duology by Arkady Martine.
So good!
Alan Dean Foster
The Damned Seies: https://www.goodreads.com/series/40571-the-damned
Peter F Hamilton
The Commonwealth series: https://www.goodreads.com/series/108563-commonwealth-universe Start with Pandoras Star and go from there.
The Final Architecture series by Adrian Tchaikovsky is epic!
Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series is equally good but much calmer, less action.
Other sci-fi series or books I've really enjoyed recently:
Old Man's war is on my list. What did you like about it?
OMW is just very easy to read (because Scalzi writes easily and funny) and it has a lot of action in space. However, not all books are equal good. I think the first one was the best.
I really enjoyed the first of the Final Architecture books, and found the second enjoyable, but by the third I was starting to fatigue to the concepts and found the story to be more and more tedious to finish: something Tchaikovsky’s other works didn’t do to me.
I've never bothered trying to watch the Expanse show. I've read the series. Seeing the show would be cool, but knowing that the show is only half the story? Nah.
It's the same part of me that feels tricked by Game of Thrones and Name of the Wind. Not a fan of unfinished stories.
It is surprisingly good, but indeed by the 4th season it is deviating heavily from the books in prep for wrapping up.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler They also basically dont mention the void entities at all since they werent able to go in depth with the late timeline stuff :::
The show is worth seeing after the read. It’s unlike any other sci-fi show out there and the production is A+++. They hit a lot of the notes the book pushes and honestly it’s refreshing to see some of the changes despite it affecting the cast.
I've read the series a few times and watched it as well.
The first season is sort of amazing and I really appreciated the adaptation. Honestly , the first several seasons were good. Definitely not as good as the books though.
The fourth season is not really worth it. Amazon bought it and pretty much just killed it.
Oh hell, I'm going to start reading them when I'm done with mine lol.
Oof, feels like such a sci-fi heartbreak show. It SOUNDS amazing, and if they could have done a faithful adaptation of the entire book series, I'd be all-in.
But...cancelling it before they even reach the halfway point of the story? Ugh.
💯 but, I do think that first season was some of the best sci fi produced and the following seasons were surprising strong until the acquisition. It's a good story.
It was like too good for modern consumption lol. I am real interested in media adaptations, so it may intersect with another of my interest.
I think you seem to have a pretty good handle on it.
To be fair, I think those last couple of books would have been real difficult from a technical point of view.
What do you think would be hard to depict on screen? To me, the passage of time would be the biggest challenge. Look at Outlander. Jamie and Claire are supposed to age 20 years before being reunited, but they still look 30 in the later seasons!
Other than that, I wouldn't actually worry. Makeup and CGI would do for most of the alien stuff involved in the story.
Oh, the age was the big hang up. I guess you're probably right though, they could probably whip something up. It is a bit harder to pull off that perspective shift though.
It isn't even a hard thing. We've had passable age makeup for longer than I've been alive. They just need to use it!
I usually like Niven and Pournelle's stuff, and particularly recommend The Mote in God's Eye for a great first contact encounter. There's a sequel The Gripping Hand which is not as great, but still worth the read.
I really liked The Gripping Hand though I agree it's difficult to reach the level of excellence that is The Mote in God’s Eye.
I frequently end up saying "On the third hand...or on the Gripping hand, as the Moties would say..."
Alastair Reynolds “Redemption Ark” series is great.
Ann Leckie's “Ancillary Justice” (Imperial Radch) series is fantastic.
I came to the thread to recommend the Imperial Radch
Gideon the ninth. Not very Scalzi (whom I admit I'm not always a fan of), and only a bit SciFi but I keep coming back to this series cause her characters are excellent
(Maybe this doesn't qualify cause the first book is hardly in space)
This is the first time I've seen someone else recommend Gideon the ninth. I read the first book when it originally came out and have been recommending it to friend for years, but no one has taken me up on it.
We are not alone! I haven't enjoyed the rest of the series as much, but after a few rereads I liked them better.
I'm.waiting on rhe next one, any gossip about it?
The Ancillary series (aka Imperial Radch series) by Ann Leckie is exceptionally good. Start with Ancillary Justice.
Ann Leckie is an amazing human.
The Children of Time series was pretty fun. Adrian Tschaikovsky, I think.
I haven't disliked any of his books so far. His Elder Race book was such a good blend of sci-fi and fantasy even if it was a little cheesy. I'm really looking forward to part 2 later this year.
Because nobody has suggested it yet, Blindsight and Echopraxia are excellent.
And freely available online due to the author making them CC!
My fellow space vampire lovers! (It's way more philosophy than space vampires)
"Space vampires" is such a turn-off of an idea for me that I'm glad I didn't know about it going in but WOW was it a great concept!
I think it's my favorite handling of vampires by a long shot, even though I think he's only using them to contrast beings they run into
Red rising was fun, but I lowkey was very lost towards the end.
Realizing I've only read that and the enders game series, I really need to branch out but I tend to prefer comics for scifi. Don't like most fantasy comics tho.
Two series I deeply love:
Little Fuzzy
Fuzzy Sapiens
Fuzzies and Other People
H. Beam Piper - From 1962: What happens when human induced climate change causes a previously unknown race of people to mass migrate into human territory? On a world controlled by a corporation that only has rights so long as the planet has no native population?
Really light and breezy and the first one is public domain:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18137
The Man Who Never Missed
Matadora
The Machiavelli Interface
Steve Perry - A soldier engaging in genocide on a backwater world has a religious experience and walks away. Through a few serendipitous events, he trains in a few unique martial arts and starts a one man campaign to bring the fascist campaign down. But not as himself, he's under no illusion that one man can survive. He builds a philosophy that attracts others to finish his work if he's unable.
Outside the core trilogy listed above, each of the major characters gets their own book:
Omega Cage
97th Step
The Albino Knife
Black Steel
Brother Death
The Musashi Flex
Churl
Just started Matadora, thanks, it starts strong and doesn't feel dated at all.
You are in for a RIDE! No spoilers!
Dan Moren's Galactic Cold War series might be a good fit. Like Scalzi, it's very soft sci fi, with a somewhat military bent (spies, in this case) and well-written characters.
Also, if you liked Old Man's War, I actually thought Scalzi's Interdependency series was better so you might enjoy that.
It’s a trio of novellas, so kind of reads like a series — I’m a huge fan of Nnendi Okorafor’s Binti
Also a big enjoyer of John Scalzi's "Old Man's War", I really enjoyed Pierce Brown's Red Rising saga..
its rather towards the soft side of sci-fi (honestly some of the tech in it feels like something out of the hitchhiker's guide books except not generally played for humor), but I remember quite enjoying David Brin's "uplift" series. Not all of the books are set in space per se but there are significant chunks that are and the parts that arent often at least involve spaceships and alien planets.
2001: A Space Odyssey still holds up incredibly well. A true classic of the genre that not even the equally great Kubrick adaptation could fully capture.
John Scalzi's other books are pretty great too. Check out The Interdependency Series. It's about an interstellar empire that can only navigate through wormholes that are now closing up. The last emperor foresaw this and is trying to save as many humans as possible while fending off political rivals and assassins.
For a similar series check out Foundation from Isaac Asimov. It's more of an anthology of stories over the course of a millennium but Asimov has a brilliant way of piecing the story together through the vast gaps in time.
Hyperion is an honorable mention. It's another anthology told a la Canterbury Tales revolving around a mysterious and invincible metallic monster known as a Shrike, which is known to impale its victims in a metal tree - dooming them to an eternity of agony in a pocket dimension.
I really enjoyed seveneves
edit: even if there are some ... less than desirable characters in it.
I've found the Starship's Mage series by Glynn Stewart very entertaining.
Premise: interstellar flight requires you to have at least one mage on board who uses their magic to move the star ship by a light year but then needs to sleep off magical exhaustion for several hours.
How and why mages developed and where they fit in society is revealed later.
Totally different subject matter from old mans war but The Inverted Frontier series by Linda Nagata is really good. There's also a prequel trilogy The Nanotech Succesion, which you don't have to read before Inverted frontier but it's good and I reccomend it as well.
Project Hail Mary
The Salvager series py Alex White (science fantasy)
All of these recommendations so far are a grab bag of anything sci-fi. For something with similar themes and more of a focus on space warfare ops I would highly recommend Expeditionary Force by Craig Alanson.
Briefest possible synopsis: humans are forcefully introduced to wider space civilization, which is in a constant state of structured war. The focus is on a covert ops team always trying to get an edge by outsmarting much more powerful civilizations. It's dramatic and funny.
Saving
Some older stuff - Larry Niven's Flatlander collection is really good.
CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series and Alliance-Union universe
For the Old Man's War flavor, I recently finished Neal Asher's Agent Cormac series, which is a subset of his Polity series. The stories are stellar, excellent character development, and deliciously complex moral issues. I'd say it's interstellar James Bond (Daniel Craig's version) having a love child with The Culture, early Tom Clancy, and "Heart of Darkness." My one caution is that Asher's sentence structure sometimes almost feels like reading Thackeray.
I am now going back and reading the rest of the Polity novels in order. I am quite pleased. I kinda wish I started from the beginning, but it's also been fun to have that "foresight" on events now that I'm in the earlier novels.
Oof, I'm partway through The Soldier, feeling like I'm missing some clues. I picked it up at the library having seen "book 1 of..." on the cover. I had no clue it was midway through a big, established setting!
Maybe I should return it and re-request after I read the earlier Polity novels...hmm...
In some of the books I've read so far, Asher does okay with backfilling some details if you skipped previous novels. But there is definitely a whole lot of backstory you might be missing on Orlandine, the Jain, the Prador, and the complexities of... everything. There are long-running plots within plots, and more than a couple conspiracies.
FWIW: this is the reading order I'm now using: https://www.readingorders.info/the-neal-ashers-polity-universe-reading-order/
Ha, I have some more books to request from the library!