Extensive space travel. Not giant vessels going into deep space, but a very detailed mesh of travel ‘lanes’ with lots of 5(ish)-seat vehicles (some big transports too. The kind of things you might expect in a heavily-populated ‘space’)
A bit of romance (but in no way a central theme)
Young characters (early twenties).
Modern ideas of what future might be like (I don’t want books that are 20-30 years old, but if any old book does have a very good ‘idea’ of the future then by all means reccomend it)
I am hungry for a book/story that possibly doesn’t exist*, and probably has more criteria/different criteria than the above.
[sub]And I’m not a writer so can’t make it exist myself[/sub]
Feel free to submit your own requests by the way.
(given more time I could probably have thought of a much richer set of criteria, but right now I am running out of time, and narrowing the criteria might narrow the chance of such a book existing. However, if I manage to narrow it enough I might have a story, right there, within the criteria!)
Closest I can think of off the top of my head is either of the two excellent recent works by Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky or (especially) A Fire Upon the Deep
Skiffy has titles like Bimbos of the Death Sun*. Skiffy is bad writing and bad science combined. SF/science fiction is a good story, well told, with believable science.
Some SFWA members on the differences between SF, sci-fi, and skiffy.
*Which isn’t skiffy or SF at all, but a hilarious mystery. Highly enjoyable for anyone who’s ever attended an SF con.
I just finished Greg Bear’s Anvil of the Stars and it centers around Earth teens and twenty somethings sent out to avenge the destruction of Earth. The only thing missing is the extensive space travel but it’s hinted at.
It isn’t as hokey as it sounds; I really liked it.
I’m sure some other, more knowledgeable fan, like Lynn can tell you its merit when compared to similar books. I’m a relative neophyte to SF… I’ve spent the last five years reading Star Trek skiffy.
Try Greg Bear’s Anvil of the Stars… the only thing missing is extensive space travel although it does take place on an interstellar ship and the end destination is a solar system with trillions of life forms.
Sounds somewhat like Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat series… I’ve only read the first three, but the “heavily populated cosmos” idea is there. Just ignore some of the future speculation; at one point the character has a suitcase full of reel-to-reel tapes to reprogram a computer.
It’s related to the difference between ‘cartoons’ and ‘animation,’ ‘comic books’ and ‘graphic novels,’ or ‘erotica’ and ‘porn.’
Which is to say, it is theoretically a way to distinguish the high quality stuff for the adults from the crap for the kids. In practice, unfortunately, it frequently boils down to a justification of ‘stuff I like’ vs. ‘stuff you like.’
It’s an absolute boolean, remember. Any given example is either one or the other, it couldn’t POSSIBLY be somewhere between.
That being said, I can’t think of anything that fits even half of your criteria, so I’ll recommend Walter Jon Williams’ Angel Station, which fits some of them. Middle future, focus on travel and transport, some (dysfunctional) romance, young characters.
It’s, unfortunately, his worst book, but that’s still pretty damn good. Aristoi and Voice of the Whirlwind both fit SOME of your criteria, and are considerably better . . .
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‘That being said, enjoy your crappy sci-fi movie.’
This is just the sort of obsessing over irrelevancies that leads the mainstream to believe the science fiction world is chiefly populated by socially retarded nerds and geeks.
You might look at a book by John Barnes titled The Duke of Uranium. Reminded me a bit of one of Heinlein’s juveniles (though of course not up to Heinlein’s level). A pretty light read (and probably falls into Lynne’s “sciffy” category) but it does have young characters, a touch of romance and what I thought were some interesting ideas on what the future may be like. There is also some space travel but not as a central theme (and not really involving a lot of small ships; a portion of the book is set on a large solar sail cargo ship).
Again, it’s a bit on the light read side but it passed a couple of hours on the plane.
Seems to me that the Vorkosigan Series by Lois McMaster Bujold is just what you’re looking for. It’s space opera very well done. The series has won four Hugos and been nominated for even more.
It looks like you misunderstood me (but that’s my fault)