Space Opera Fans discussion

Hi everyone, just wondering if there are any books out there about spaceships that are lost and trying to find there way home. Something like Lost in Space or Star Trek Voyager. I am aware of The Lost Fleet series by the way.
cheers

I'm getting old, and sometimes have a bad memory for things, so I apologise for this in advance.

There was a sci-fi book I read years ago that had Earth's moon as a giant, dormant, spaceship.

Can't remember the title, or the author's name.

aurora cv1 , excellent series

House of Suns? Aurora?

There was an old kid's show called Space Cases where 4 kids, 2 adults, and a robot were trying to get home. I'd be interested in a book or series similar to that.

Ronnie, I have vague memory of Luna being abandoned space station/ship. Unfortunately I have Wolheim's Secret of the Martian Moons with Phobos and Deimos rather than Luna stuck in my mind at the moment.
Liam & Brandon, STV like book could be adult SF or at least YA or NA but probably not juvenile. Lost in Space type would more likely be juvenile SF. Are you interested in books for all age ranges? If so you might be interested in juvenile/teen/YA SF from the 1950's - 60's. I remember reading some along those lines but that was a lot of books and authors ago. Keep in mind the science is likely to be behind the times and social behavior will usually reflect social norms of the time but that's also true of Lost in Space.

Hi LJ im not too concerned about who its set for, or when its written. Just looking for something where the characters feel alone and vulnerable and eventually get used to their situation. kind of what you get when you start a survival computer game.

Liam wrote: "Hi LJ im not too concerned about who its set for, or when its written. Just looking for something where the characters feel alone and vulnerable and eventually get used to their situation. kind of ..."

Would you consider stranded/cut-off colony books? I'm seeing more of those the last 20 years or so than the stuck on a spaceship kind.

The Silver Ships starts out with an asteroid miner discovering a derelict ship that contains an entire crew in stasis escaping from an alien ship that tried to destroy them. He helps them return to their home system and go on to fight the aliens. There's not really much about being on the derelict ship, since the crew was in stasis, but it's a good story.

Beneath the Sky is about a huge colony ship that has been traveling for hundreds of years and many generations of its passengers. They're not lost, but they've certainly had to adjust to life on a ship.

Ringworld is sorta Lost in Space-esque. The alien Nessus kidnaps human Louis Wu and alien Speaker-to-Animals and they all crashland on the Ringworld.

Liam wrote: "Hi LJ im not too concerned about who its set for, or when its written. Just looking for something where the characters feel alone and vulnerable and eventually get used to their situation. kind of ..."

How about the human Tully having to adapt to life onboard alien ship in Cherryh's The Pride of Chanur. The ship isn't lost but Tully is in the sort of situation you describe.

There is a series called Far from Home that I thought was decent. Also I’ve read the first two books by M.D. Cooper in his Outsystem novels and enjoyed them

Far from home sounds exactly what I am look for cheers. All the other suggestions sound amazing too. If there are any other suggestions please keep them coming :)

Far from Home is written by Tony Henley and is available at Amazon. If you read it let us know what you thought, but I enjoyed.

Starship by Brian Aldiss seems in line with what you're looking for. The crew of the eponymous starship have been traveling blindly for centuries and don't even know they're on a ship.

Theres a series called the zones of thought series, with A Fire Upon the Deep as the first novel by Verner Vinge. The ship is not “lost” per se, but essentially relativity makes it so. In this universe, you travel between stars at the speed of light which causes different flow rates of time, so essentially hundreds or thousands of years pass in the slow universe. Interesting concepts as you would experience something similar in the real universe unless we can i vent ftl

I just remembered a classic that I haven’t yet read, Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero.

It’s about a starship heading out to colonize another planet, but their Bussard ramjet is damaged en route. Unfortunately, the ramjet is not just the engine they need to both accelerate and decelerate but is also the only thing protecting them from the deadly radiation they’re encountering.

Which means they can’t slow down *or* turn off the engine to repair it. The farther and faster they go, the farther they effectively go into the future due to increasing time dilation. That’s lost in space AND time.