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?
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)
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)
CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner series and Alliance-Union universe
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.
It’s a trio of novellas, so kind of reads like a series — I’m a huge fan of Nnendi Okorafor’s Binti
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:
- Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Redshirts by John Scalzi
- The Expanse series. Although I only made it part way though book 5 when I started watching the show and stopped reading it.
Old Man’s war is on my list. What did you like about it?
The expanse
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.
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
Two series I deeply love:
Little Fuzzy
Fuzzy Sapiens
Fuzzies and Other PeopleH. 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 InterfaceSteve 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
ChurlJust started Matadora, thanks, it starts strong and doesn’t feel dated at all.
You are in for a RIDE! No spoilers!
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Hands down the best 5 part trilogy in Sci Fi
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.
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.
