So my new job has left me with a substantial amount of time that I’m basically at work and on call, but not too busy to read. I’ve recently been back through Niven and Pournelle’s Legacy of Heorot, and then on to Allen Steele’s Coyote series, which I’m midway through right now. But I’ll be entirely through it in a week or two, so I’ll be needing more. What else to try? I’ve already read everything Heinlein wrote on the subject, and Scalzi too. Any recommendations?
JEM by Fred Pohl
The Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson
Dammit. I saw the thread topic and was coming in here to recommend Coyote.
I was going to recommend Scalzi. I know I’ve read more - posting to remind myself to check my shelves one the baby has gone to bed.
I was going to recommend The Legacy of Heorot, but since you’ve already read that, there’s also a sequel, Beowulf’s Children. Then there’s Destiny’s Road, which isn’t precisely a sequel, but which appears to be set on a different planet in the same universe, a couple of generations after planetfall.
I also enjoyed Destiny’s Road.
Well, it’s older and pretty sexist by today’s standards, but Bradley’s Darkover Landfall is about the original colonization of Darkover by Earth people.
You know, I tried Robinsons’s Mars stuff and never got anywhere. Maybe I’ll give it another shot. I also read Beowulf’s Children and The Secret of Black Ship Island (a novella set between the two) and enjoyed them, but they didn’t have the punch of the original.
Recently I read Andy Weir’s The Martian, one of those $.99 Kindle books, and loved it. It’s not a colonization book, per se; it’s about a guy who gets left behind on an exploration mission and his frantic attempts to get the hell off the planet! Very hard SF, very good.
I really like Janet Kagen’s Miribile. It’s set some generations after the colonist’s landing. It’s very biology/ecology themed, thanks to job of the protagonist Mama Jason.
I always liked Anne McCaffrey’s Decision at Doona as well.
Ooh, and I’m not sure how I forgot Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky. It wasn’t originally intended as a colonization mission, but I think it ends up being all the better for that.
Typhon’s Children by Toni Anzetti.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell - actually about exploration and contact.
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon
KSR’s Mars series is a little slow to start but ultimately (IMHO) worthy.
Similarly, McCaffrey’s Dragonsdawn is about the original colonisation of Pern.
It’s YA, but I will make a pitch for Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy.
If you’re talking Heinlein, you want Farmer in the Sky. Yes, it’s an oldie (published in 1953) but it holds up okay and its central story is about developing a colony world.
As noted in the OP, I’ve read all of Heinlein already; my dad used the Boys Books to get me started on SF when I was about eight. They’re great suggestions and exactly what I’m looking for, except that I’ve long since read them all. Destiny’s Road was fine, I guess, but I never like Niven much when he’s got no co-authors. Guy has some tremendous ideas, but his characters always fall flat to me.
Typhon’s Children looks good, I’ll check it out if I can find a copy.
This is great, folks, keep 'em coming!
There’s Colony by Rob Grant(half of the Red Dwarf writing team). I don’t know if it really matches what you’re after though, as I think it’s 99% set on the colony ship. It’s not hard sci-fi but it is very funny.
Been a long time since I’ve read a lot of SF, but I always thought that C.J. Cherryh’s Forty-Thousand in Gehenna was a great example of this type of story.
One of his better juveniles, almost the first Heinlein I ever read, when I was a tweener. Took me a while to realize Caroline was black.
Did you notice that Rob Thomas himself was black, too? Apparently, Heinlein did that deliberately, to tweak off a racist editor.
And Farmer was also a colonization story; just not quite as good (in my opinion) as Tunnel.