# Got any suggestions for space science fiction? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 26, 2012, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372 "2012-06-26T18:40:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/21 "2012-06-27T06:43:03Z")
There was a magazine called [Space Science Fiction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Science_Fiction) published in the 1950s. (I just indexed the magazine shown in the link on Saturday, so it was fresh in my mind.) Helpful, I know. More usefully, Stephen Baxter has two that might suit. **Voyage** is about a trip to Mars in an Apollo capsule in an alternate world where JFK lived. It is actually very similar to the true story of Apollo. **Titan** is a darker story of a trip to Titan on a space shuttle. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/22 "2012-06-27T07:16:25Z")
How about John Varley’s _Red Thunder_? Less than twenty years old, all takes places on Earth, Mars, or points between, and right in your length criterion. Four college-age kids and a washed out astronaut go to Mars. All of the science is excellent except for the drive, which works, more or less, by magic. It reads like a love letter to Heinlein’s juveniles. Great stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/23 "2012-06-27T07:38:02Z")
You can try Stephen R. Donaldson’s _Gap Cycle_ - it takes place almost completely in space, and involves an impressive amount of space-to-space combat. The world-building is very good, and it even makes some nods in the direction of actual physics. That’s said, the characters and prose are excessively Donaldsonian, even more so than usual. If you’ve read him before, you know what that means, and if you haven’t, consider yourself warned. (Incidentally, the series features two of the best book names in the history of SF:\* A Dark and Hungry God Arises\* and _This Day All Gods Dies_. You see, it’s actually a retelling of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. In space.). ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/24 "2012-06-27T08:00:56Z")
A little old (1972), but there is no better choice than Arthur Clarke’s _Rendezvous With Rama_. I can’t recommend it highly enough. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/25 "2012-06-27T08:48:15Z")
> [@appleciders](#): > > How about John Varley’s _Red Thunder_? Less than twenty years old, What? It was published in 1934! ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/26 "2012-06-27T11:05:59Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Are you aware _Spin_ is the first book in a trilogy? The sequels are _Axis_ and _Vortex_. I read **Axis** and thought it was pretty good, but not as amazing as **Spin**. I didn’t know there was a third; thanks! In any case, **Spin** works as a stand-alone novel, which is one of the best things a first book in a trilogy can do :). ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/27 "2012-06-27T12:22:09Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > What? It was published in 1934! Am I missing a joke? _Red Thunder_ is from 2003. Or are you commenting on the fact that it was deliberately written in the style of one of Heinlein’s juveniles? ---
**Author:** ![A\_Sniveling\_Mess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b19c9b/32.png) [@A\_Sniveling\_Mess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Sniveling_Mess)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/28 "2012-06-27T14:24:53Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > It sounds like you’ve ordered up a copy of ["The Cassini Division](http://www.amazon.com/The-Cassini-Division-Ken-MacLeod/dp/0812568583)" by Ken McLeod, which takes place mostly in the space around Jupiter. There’s a lot of libertarianism in it, but it’s mostly space and future stuff and is generally fun. I just skip over the political dreck like I skipped over John Norman’s anti-feminist dreck in the Gor novels. Life’s too short, and good reads are too rare to let political dreck get in the way. That book seems weird-which is just how I like them.Thanks for the suggestion! ---
**Author:** ![A\_Sniveling\_Mess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b19c9b/32.png) [@A\_Sniveling\_Mess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Sniveling_Mess)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/29 "2012-06-27T14:28:18Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > A little old (1972), but there is no better choice than Arthur Clarke’s _Rendezvous With Rama_. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Yeah,it seems like a lot of people like that book.As far as Clarke books go,is _Fountains of Paradise_ any good?(I’m not sure if that book was published after 1980,and it may be over 500 pages long,so it might not follow my own guidelines.I don’t know.But anyway,it’s gotten pretty good reviews.) ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/30 "2012-06-27T15:02:03Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > It sounds like you’ve ordered up a copy of ["The Cassini Division](http://www.amazon.com/The-Cassini-Division-Ken-MacLeod/dp/0812568583)" by Ken McLeod, which takes place mostly in the space around Jupiter. There’s a lot of libertarianism in it… ‘Red Ken’ wrote a book with a lot of libertarianism? I can’t imagine he was in favor of it. That sounds boggling, but you make it sound like an interesting book; I’ll have to check it out. For the OP, I like ‘[Galactic North](http://www.amazon.com/Galactic-North-Alastair-Reynolds/dp/1400140544)’ from Alastair Reynolds. It’s a book of short stories/novellas set in the Solar System (and beyond) of 2-300 years from now: e.g., Mars and Europa are colonized. The first couple of stories are set in the Solar System, before humanity figures out interstellar sublight drives. He gets dark. The stories aren’t individually 100-500 pages long, but the ones dealing with the Solar System only, combine to that length, I think. A longer novel from him, also set in the Solar System (but a different history) is [Pushing Ice](http://www.amazon.com/Pushing-Ice-Alastair-Reynolds/dp/0575083115). I liked both quite a bit. He tends fairly hard on the [Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness). ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/31 "2012-06-27T15:39:32Z")
> [@JRyan35](#): > > Yeah,it seems like a lot of people like that book.As far as Clarke books go,is _Fountains of Paradise_ any good?(I’m not sure if that book was published after 1980,and it may be over 500 pages long,so it might not follow my own guidelines.I don’t know.But anyway,it’s gotten pretty good reviews.) _Fountains of Paradise_ (1979) is very good also, IMHO. I’m not entirely sure it would be your cup of tea, though, as it focuses on science and engineering more than maybe any others of Clarke’s books. Still, building an elevator to space is a really fantastic concept and he does a terrific job imagining it. FYI, almost all of Clarke’s work is pretty firmly rooted in real science and in the laws of physics as we understand them. He’s a great storyteller, but he’s not your go to guy for swashbuckling adventure yarns. ---
**Author:** ![A\_Sniveling\_Mess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b19c9b/32.png) [@A\_Sniveling\_Mess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Sniveling_Mess)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/32 "2012-06-27T22:37:00Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > _Fountains of Paradise_ (1979) is very good also, IMHO. I’m not entirely sure it would be your cup of tea, though, as it focuses on science and engineering more than maybe any others of Clarke’s books. Still, building an elevator to space is a really fantastic concept and he does a terrific job imagining it. > > FYI, almost all of Clarke’s work is pretty firmly rooted in real science and in the laws of physics as we understand them. He’s a great storyteller, but he’s not your go to guy for swashbuckling adventure yarns. Well,I guess 1979 is close enough.🙂 Anyway,it might be worth checking out _FOP_,even if it is technical,because there aren’t many other places where you can read about an elevator into space. Thanks for all the help.The 2nd paragraph of your post was especially helpful. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2012, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/33 "2012-06-28T12:50:52Z")
[S M Stirling](http://www.smstirling.com/) began his “Lords of Creation” series in 2006. There are two novels so far, plus a couple of stories. It’s set in an alternate Solar System, in which Venus & Mars are quite different. What if the Cold War military budgets had been channeled into serious interplanetary exploration? From the acknowledgments to _The Sky People_, set on a Venus inhabited by sabre tooth cats, pterodactyls, brutish subhumans & beautiful warrior princesses: > [@](#): > > Thanks to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, Otis Adelbert Kline, Leinster, Heinlein, and to all the other great pulpsters for gracing my childhood with John Carter, Northwest Smith, “Wrong-Way” Carson of Venus, and all the heroes gifted with a better solar system than the one we turned out to inhabit. From the jungles of Venus and the Grand Canal of Marsopolis, I salute you! _In The Courts of The Crimson Kings_ takes us to Mars: > [@](#): > > It _was_ his first trip outside Kennedy Base. He’d seen pictures of the these towers with their time-faded colors and the lacy crystalline bridges that joined them, the transparent domes below full of an astonishing flowering lushness, the narrow serpentine streets between blank-faced buildings of rose-red stone… but now he could see them for himself. They reminded him a little of Indian Mughal architecture done by someone on opium and freed from the limits of stone and the constraints of gravity, but there was a soft-edged quality to them unlike anything his world had ever bred, as if they had grown here. > > In the distance loomed jagged heights that had been the edge of a continent when the site of this city was below the waves of a vanished sea… ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2012, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/34 "2012-06-28T13:20:28Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > _Fountains of Paradise_ (1979) is very good also, IMHO. I’m not entirely sure it would be your cup of tea, though, as it focuses on science and engineering more than maybe any others of Clarke’s books. Still, building an elevator to space is a really fantastic concept and he does a terrific job imagining it. > > FYI, almost all of Clarke’s work is pretty firmly rooted in real science and in the laws of physics as we understand them. He’s a great storyteller, but he’s not your go to guy for swashbuckling adventure yarns. Charles Sheffield’s _The Web Between the Worlds_ came out at the same time as _Fountains of Paradise_, and is also about building a Space Elevator. In fact, Clarke wrote a Foreword for Shweffield’s book pointing out the (often eeerie) similarities, and absolving Sheffield of plagiarism – the similsarities are due to “convergent evolution” of two writers describing the same situation, and being so similar that the Chief Engineers have the same background, and both name the Elevator “spider”. But the stories still diverge considerably in other aspects, and Clarke doubts the feasibility of Sheffield’s anchoring process for the elevator. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2012, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/35 "2012-06-28T13:38:30Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Charles Sheffield’s _The Web Between the Worlds_ came out at the same time as _Fountains of Paradise_, and is also about building a Space Elevator. In fact, Clarke wrote a Foreword for Shweffield’s book pointing out the (often eeerie) similarities, and absolving Sheffield of plagiarism – the similsarities are due to “convergent evolution” of two writers describing the same situation, and being so similar that the Chief Engineers have the same background, and both name the Elevator “spider”. But the stories still diverge considerably in other aspects, and Clarke doubts the feasibility of Sheffield’s anchoring process for the elevator. Thanks for this. I didn’t know about Sheffield’s book. ---
**Author:** ![A\_Sniveling\_Mess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b19c9b/32.png) [@A\_Sniveling\_Mess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Sniveling_Mess)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2012, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/36 "2012-06-28T13:39:41Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Charles Sheffield’s _The Web Between the Worlds_ came out at the same time as _Fountains of Paradise_, and is also about building a Space Elevator. In fact, Clarke wrote a Foreword for Shweffield’s book pointing out the (often eeerie) similarities, and absolving Sheffield of plagiarism – the similsarities are due to “convergent evolution” of two writers describing the same situation, and being so similar that the Chief Engineers have the same background, and both name the Elevator “spider”. But the stories still diverge considerably in other aspects, and Clarke doubts the feasibility of Sheffield’s anchoring process for the elevator. Is Sheffield’s book any good? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2012, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/37 "2012-06-28T13:45:09Z")
> [@JRyan35](#): > > Is Sheffield’s book any good? I liked it. It has some intriguing notions (a giant water balloon as a satellite!), but isn’t as technologically sound as Clarke’s. I prefer Clarke’s writing to Sheffield’s, as well. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2012, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372/38 "2012-07-01T04:24:37Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > What? It was published in 1934! > [@tanstaafl](#): > > Am I missing a joke? _Red Thunder_ is from 2003. Or are you commenting on the fact that it was deliberately written in the style of one of Heinlein’s juveniles? Not only is it written in the style of Heinlein’s juveniles in general, it’s kind of a rip-off of _Rocket Ship Galileo_ in particular. If I were making that joke, though, I’d have said 1947, the year that _RSG_ was published. Varley does dedicate the book to RAH in the foreword, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-any-suggestions-for-space-science-fiction/626372.md?page=1)