SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I would love your suggestions for authors of space related science fiction/fantasy. Here are the authors and books I'm already familiar with:

Asimov and Heinlein
John Scalzi
Andy Weir
The Expanse books - James S.A. Corey
Contact by Carl Sagan - loved this book club book.
Ursula K. Le Guin - I love her Hainish Cycle books.

I can look for more books from these authors on my own, but can any of you recommend other authors or books that involve space travel, other planets or stars, and/or alien life.

I am a child of the space age. My dad was a NASA engineer who worked on Apollo and the Space Shuttle. I grew up going to the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. My parents probably never would have met if it were not for the space race.

Anyway, I like things about space travel. Are there any big authors or series that I should try other than the ones I listed?

Bobby

Definitely read CJ Cherryh! She has a large series - it's really multiple different series and some standalones all set in the same universe - referred to variously as Alliance/Union, Company Wars, and similar iterations. (I'm sure there is an official designation I am missing.) A few examples are Downbelow Station, Rimrunners, Tripoint, and Forty Thousand in Gehenna. Also The Faded Sun Trilogy, a tightly linked trilogy also part of this universe. Some of the stories are heavy on space travel, others focus on interesting planets, alien cultures, and human cultural development. Taken together, these can keep you busy for quite a while.

A very prominent name you didn't mention is Poul Anderson (with an -ou-; the name is Danish), a voluminous author of a good deal of "hard science" SF, and some excellent fantasy, to his credit. The Wikipedia bibliography, which you will find very useful for his series, is illustrated with beautiful / garish cover art from his career. For two standalones for the newcover, I would suggest Tales of the Flying Mountains (colonizing the asteroids) and Tau Zero (near lightspeed taken to its logical conclusion).

L. Sprague de Camp was also noted for "hard science" and rollicking fantasy, some of the latter in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt. From his Wikipedia bibliography, look at the "Viagens Interplanetarias" series (in which Brazilian Portuguese is the language of the spaceways), exciting adventures in a universe of sub-light travel, well-constructed alien civilizations, and intriguing characters (so a pompous twit -- from the perspective of the protagonist -- in one story turns out in another to be a stalwart hero). Rogue Queen, which seems to be out of print, introduced SEX to reutable science fiction in a big, and very scientific, way.

(I can't pass by de Camp without mentioning his great time travel novel (which he reckoned fantasy, but nearly everyone else regards as good science fiction), "Lest Darkness Fall," currently available in collections like Lest Darkness Fall & Related Stories -- see bibliography for the wrinkles.

(A fairly painless way of exploring the historical background to it is Robert Graves' historical novel Count Belisarius, but de Camp relied on his late-antiquity source texts. It is sort of a riposte to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, done right.)

Maybe more later

Also, The Voyage of the Space Beagle, by L. Prague de Camp. The Space Beagle being a spaceship.

And of course Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship Who Sang series. I’m sure I can come up with more. Just give me a minute.

Sorry, no links because I’m on the app!

Also, The Dazzle of Day, by Molly Gloss is mostly on a Generation Ship. Her writing is similar to Le Guin’s.

And Vonda McIntyre’s Starfarer’s series.

Space Beagle is a “fix up” of related stories by A. E van Vogt, not de Camp. It is notable for its emotive style, and contains several landmark stories of the very early Golden Age of John W. Campbell’s “Astounding.”

Its overall premise and structure bear a striking resemblance to “these are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, … to explore strange new worlds,” etc., as I have been pointing out since the 1960s…

Agree with the comments from Ian and DivaDiane. In addition to Anderson's hard sf (and Tau Zero is fabulous even if you need to tweak the nuclear reaction a bit to make the ramjet work), he also wrote a large body of what we could call space opera. Check out the Flandry series and the David Falkayn/Nick van Rijn series.

I should have added that the name of the ship is an over-obvious allusion to Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, aka A Naturalist’s Voyage Around the World.”

A couple of additional options include Larry Niven's Tales of Known Space books. Ringworld stands out as special. If you like the military side, try Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium/Empire series.

These are all great suggestions. This group is such a resource. I have read the Dune books (most of them) and Ray Bradbury and some other weird 50's stuff where they are exploring planets.

The ratings are hit or miss, but you might see if you like Ben Bova's books set in our solar system.

Whoops! Thanks, Ian, for putting the record straight. Faulty memory. And the parallels to Star Trek totally jumped out at me, when I read it the first time several months ago.

The weird thing is, proto-Star Trek went through various permutations, and it can’t really be claimed to have been based on van Vogt very directly. But it may have been in the backs of the minds of some contributors. My personal bet would be Samuel A. Peeples, who scripted the second pilot, which sold the series to a reluctant network. But he was known for westerns, not involvement with science fiction, and it was being pitched as “Wagon Train to the stars.” See his Wikipedia biography.

And I am old enough to have read Space Beagle pre-Star Trek, so I sort of envy someone encountering it all fresh and “new.”

I loved the Space Beagle! It’s always fun to read one of these old classics and be pleasantly surprised by its quality.

I enjoyed very much the richness of ideas in Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem. Lots of strange new aliens, lots of space travelling.

Cleo wrote: "I enjoyed very much the richness of ideas in Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem. Lots of strange new aliens, lots of space travelling."

I read that one! I guess I need to read the next two.

Bobby wrote: "Cleo wrote: "I enjoyed very much the richness of ideas in Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem. Lots of strange new aliens, lots of space travelling."

I read that one! I guess I need to read the nex..."

It's a great book and I really like it. :)
So, my little list:
The Neverness Universe by David Zindell. There's a lot of space travel and it's very interestingly described.
Golden Witchbreed and Ancient Light by Mary Gentle.
Wayfarers by Becky Chambers.
Some of George R.R. Martin's books, like Tuf Voyaging, are real space opera.

I also remember Sundiver by David Brin. This book is about a spaceship that goes to the Sun to study the ghost-like creatures that live there. I mean, they just live on the Sun. And it's really good science fiction.

Hitchhiker's guide to galaxy 🌌🌠

V wrote: "Hitchhiker's guide to galaxy 🌌🌠"

One of my favorites when I was younger. :)

Jim Hines' Janitors of the Post-apocalypse trilogy, starting with Terminal Alliance. Very funny with a fun diversity of aliens.

Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire, starting with Ninefox Gambit. This is really imaginative writing, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear. Space pirates! There's more books set in this universe, but this is the only one I've read so far.

Meredith wrote: "Jim Hines' Janitors of the Post-apocalypse trilogy, starting with Terminal Alliance. Very funny with a fun diversity of aliens.

Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire, starting with [..."

The White Space series by Elizabeth is so good. 3rd book coming out next year. 👍

Yeah, I recently read Ninefox Gambit and liked it quite a bit once I got my head around the novel's universe. I'm looking forward to the second book, which I'll get to after I get through my current wave of spooky season reading and October BotM picks.

I have a free ebook of Machine (the second book in the White Space series) that's been on my TBR list all year--I need to get to that series. Everything I've heard about Bear suggest I'd really like her writing.

I've been reading Sektor 47 by N.N. Jehangir since it didn't make the final cut for this group's November SF BotM poll. It's a pretty decent debut novel, definitely inspired by Star Wars and especially The Mandalorian. I wouldn't mind seeing this novel expanded into a series.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) series by Dennis E. Taylor has a good blend of comedy and science as AI piloted ships explore the galaxy in search of possible colony sites. Caveat since you have a science background: There are some conflicting timelines that don't quite match up considering the vast distances involved, but it was a minor annoyance to me YMMV

Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell - low stakes first book in a series about a guy who starts his journey making coffee on a merchant ship, and then builds his life into so much more

Activation Degradation by Marina Lostetter - conflict between humans and alien invaders when ships attack a mine in the Jovian atmosphere. Most of the story takes place on a ship.

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty - "snow-bound" mystery on a ship as newly awakened clones try to figure out what happened to the previous crew

Alastair Reynolds e.g Pushing Ice

Iain M. Banks e.g. Consider Phlebas

Shards of Earth and the other two books in the series by Adrian Tchaikovsky have lots of space battles, aliens, artists (?), and cyborgs

I second Alastair Reynolds. Chasm City is my favourite. Hard scifi with space travel almost all of the time, but it's dark.

For the lighter stuff, Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy (first part: The Reality Dysfunction) has plenty of spaceships and some stunt flying through a ring system around a gas giant.

Since the neighbouring thread is about The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente, I'll take the liberty of recommending Space Opera by the same author. It's a space opera both literally and figuratively, so it's definitely a space-related book.

try Stephen Baxter's NASA sequence (wich can be read independently from each other) , then. He is a award winning British SF author, a Mathematician and Engineer and especially the first part of the series has a lot of insights into NASA's organization and technology. Voyage is about a Mission to Mars, although placed in an alternative history where JFK wasn't assassinated: what would have become of the Space Program if that were true?

1 Voyage (1996)
2 Titan (1997)
3 Moonseed (1998)

The Wayfarer-series!

Thanks everyone. I just checked back in this thread. I will have to look for these in 2025.

Now don't judge me, but I was thinking 'Bill The Galactic Hero' series by Harry Harrison, very funny - Not to be taken seriously.

FYI. I'm a big Star Trek fan so any connections would be great. Have you folks read any David Gerrold? I think he wrote The Trouble with Tribbles episode on TOS and he has a few novels.

I read A Matter for Men, the first of his Chtorr books about 30 years ago. I liked it well enough, but never picked up any of the rest of the series. A half-hearted recommendation, but it all I can provide.

On your request for authors, I am currently reading The Voyage of the Space Beagle by Van Vogt and think it would fit the bill. This was written in 1939 and, like early Asimov, many later SF authors read it and were in some small way shaped by it. I would guess Roddenberry was either influenced by it or came to the same sort of idea on his own. Definitely involves space exploration and encountering strange new creatures.