Space Opera Fans discussion

I’m considering a theme on Asteroids. Lots of good books take place at least partly on an asteroid, in an asteroid belt, or among asteroids clumped in a Lagrange point of a Jovian planet. Sometimes it’s our own solar system’s belt, others it’s a different star system entirely.

I’ll start us off with two oldies
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven (and Pournelle? Goodreads makes it hard to look up coauthors). We read this one already. The first Motie the human ship finds is salvaging on an asteroid.

The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein. The Stone family’s tour includes a considerable stay in the Asteroid Belt, where there is a solid population of miners, pioneers, etc.

Lots of Niven’s stuff utilizes asteroids. Brennan-monster’s home in Protector, for instance.

I keep checking Amazon every month or so, hoping that Protector will be available as ebook. So far no luck. Emergence by Palmer did eventually appear - I had been checking for that one similarly. I have a wishlist of such books, to make it easier to search.

Oh for eyes that can handle paperback font sizes again...

The Expanse series.

The Cambridge Annex series books 3, 5 and 6 take place at least partly in the asteroid belt. Book three is The Cambridge Annex - Asteroid Mining: Book Three.

Somewhere around here I have a short story collection focusing entirely on asteroids.

While looking for it here, I uncovered

The Asteroid Wars
On to the Asteroid
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids
Asteroid Outpost
Life Among Asteroids
Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates
Captain Algernon Fisk Against the Pirates of the Asteroid Belt
One of Our Asteroids is Missing/The Twisted Men

...not sure why there are so many juveniles featuring pirates. Parallels with the islands of the Caribbean?

In Home Run, by Nathan Lowell, the heroines must rescue, and rebuild, an asteroid mining station that was attacked.

He Do the Time Police in Different Voices by Dave Langford contains the rather excellent *Sex Pirates of the Blood Asteroid*, allegedly by someone called 'E.E. Sm*th', whoever that might be.

The new Daniel Suarez book Delta-V is all about mining asteroids. YMMV but I gave it 2 stars.

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

There are a lot of hidden secret labs in asteroids. And the pirates ... like in the series A Galaxy Unknown by Thomas DePrima.