Space Opera Fans discussion

There are a lot of good stories out there about finding alien technology. If the military gets it then typically it is either hidden immediately and the government tries to hide the fact it was found or else it’s impossible to hide and other countries either attempt to steal it or start World War III to prevent the country that has it from getting too much of an advantage.

The scenarios I have been enjoying lately are about civilians finding the alien tech and trying to keep it out of the hands of the government or large corporations. One example is Legacy by Bob Mauldin.

Have you read any good books that use this scenario or a similar one?

In the “find alien gizmo and use it to become rich and/or powerful”, I quite like Larry Niven’s stories. People are always stumbling on tech from ancient alien civilizations, some of it many billions of years old. They even adapted one of his short stories, “The Soft Weapon”, for Star Trek: The Animated Series, as “The Slaver Weapon”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_S...

I think both Charles Sheffield and Jack McDevitt have entire series of books that are somewhat similar to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, where space archeologists investigate the ruins of ancient aliens throughout the galaxy.

Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin employs the “found an alien spaceship” trope in that collection of short stories. The ship is gargantuan (many miles long, as I recall) and basically runs itself, and Haviland Tuf has no idea how to work most of it, but he lives there with his several cats. These are fairly lightweight, semi-comedic stories for the most part, although my memory insists that one is pretty serious.

Oh, and a couple of the Murderbot stories feature the discovery of alien tech, which usually turns out to be a Bad Idea.

Oh I remember those Tuf Voyaging stories! I may need to reread those.

Teresa wrote: "Oh I remember those Tuf Voyaging stories! I may need to reread those."

I recall really enjoying them. I should reread them, too; I’m sure I must have my copy around here somewhere.

I looked it up, the Ark is 19 miles long. “That’s pretty big,” he understated. I know Martin based Tuf on a combination of himself and Alfred Hitchcock, but I could see Jack Black playing him in a TV series.

I just recently finished reading The Haunted Stars by Edmond Hamilton. In this novel, a destroyed ancient alien base is found on the moon. A linguist is brought in to translate the writing found there, which he is able to do. It contains a warning about the aliens that destroyed them, which is ignored by the fanatical military leader running the project. Using the translated material, they build a faster than light spaceship to travel to the alien home world in search of more highly advance military technology. This is a cold war novel, so of course they are racing to beat the Soviets to the tech. Once they arrive on the planet, things begin to go wrong...
Hamilton wrote a lot of space opera and this is very entertaining and thought provoking.

There’s a nomination thread up for this theme. Please feel free to nominate one of the books mentioned above. This would be for a group read fir Jan 15-Feb 15, starting when I take down the Limited pick of Legacy by Mauldin.

Several of the books in the series that starts with Bob's Saucer Repair by Jerry Boyd involve finding alien tech. If the Commonwealth counts as alien, then finding the Gene is one example. They have found tech from several alien races that are clearly not human. Bob and his crew definitely work hard to keep it out of the hands of Earth governments and hide the existence of the other alien races from the Commonwealth too.

The Boundary series by Eric Flint finds alien tech in each book, but doesn’t seem to try to keep it away from governments or the military, at least not very hard.

A Warship Named Sky: A Hero's Story looks to have a similar theme. Although the protag buys the ship, he’s only allowed to keep it due to a loophole in alien law. I only read the sample, so I don’t know how good it is.

Wanderer's Odyssey by Simon Goodson starts with slaves being used to gain access to a ship the Empire has found. Jess manages to avoid the traps, gain access to the ship, and escape. The ship is the most interesting character in the book, and I mean that in a positive way. It is very, very old and can do things we never imagined. I purchased the series. I read books 1 - 6 in 2019, and recently bought 7 and 8, but have not read them, yet.