Is there a novel that has humans in space, with FTL, and dealing with aliens that still has different countries on Earth?
For values of all of the above, sure.
The “Troy Rising” series of books (story incomplete but no future novels in the works) starting with “Live Free or Die” hits all of the above.
Granted, there’s rapid unification coming up after the first book, or at least merging of structures due to the requirements of the circumstances.
Similarly, there’s the Dahak series, starting with Mutineer’s Moon, where there are still distinct nations and friction between them, being forced into a unified structure (and eventual government) by the requirements of having an alien threat incoming, most of which is part of the second book in the series.
The “Old Man’s War” series by Scalzi. Earth is maintained as a sort of nature preserve for farming soldiers and colonists by the Human government that controls all the other colony planets.
The distinction between soldiers and colonists are largely built on national origins of each on Earth, and this plays a role in the larger narrative of the series.
Worldwar series by Harry Turtledove
Starts during WW2
It doesn’t really come up in the games that much, but this is the case in Mass Effect. Humanity is represented on the interstellar level by the Systems Alliance, which is a sort of super-EU type polity made up of several dozen nations, but less than half of Earth’s nations are members.
Poul Anderson’s After Doomsday has FTL, contact with many aliens but the USA and France (and presumably other nations) still exist
The whole 2001 novel series (and the movies 2001 and 2010) deal with first contact in the 2000s where the Cold War is still raging.
I loved the Worldwar series. I was looking for something where human are in space. There are plenty of aliens coming to the Earth books.
I liked the Old Man’s War series but the Earth nations didn’t seem to have any conflict. I guess what I’m looking for is different countries out in interstellar space competing against each other.
In the Vorkosigan series Earth still has separate nations.
In Timothy Zahn’s Spinneret Earth still having separate nations i s a major plot point, especially since the aliens treat the UN as the representative of Earth despite it not being officially in charge.
Life Probe by Michael McCollum is an edge case since they don’t have FTL; looking for data on how to achieve it is the main point of the Life Probes in the first place.
Okay, it’s not “interstellar space”, but there’s “Rip Foster Rides the Grey Planet”, which posits there’s still a cold war between the East and West, as humans move out into the solar system.
Gateway by Frederik Pohl. The five superpowers in the time the book is set are the United States, the Soviet Union, an expanded China, Brazil, and Venus.
The ending of the Worldwar series has the US show up in orbit of the alien home world with an interstellar ship, with the Imperial Japanese having developed interstellar travel as well and the implication that the Soviet’s, Nazis, and British are close behind. I always thought it would have been interesting to see another series pick up at this point, or shortly after, with the WWII factions each at the head of a small interstellar empire.
There’s always Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium series. Massive colonization between competing countries with everything dominated by the US/USSR working in “tandem.”
The Bobiverse series has an Earth that’s not united, aliens, and FTL communication, but not FTL travel (so far – I’m not done with it). That’s assuming FTL means “faster than light”.
The Accidental Time Machine has a disunited Earth, aliens of a sort (super-advanced humans) and space travel, but not FTL travel.
Ah, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a disunited Earth (temporarily, and then again), FTL travel, lots of aliens.
In Poul Anderson’s The Star Fox, although Earth is unified under a world Federation the signatory nations still retain some original quasi-sovereign rights (similar to the states vis a vis the federal government). Enough that a group of space privateers can get a (probably) valid letter of marque issued to them by France; valid enough that they can’t be extradited from French territory at any rate.
Ken MacLeod’s recent Lightspeed Trilogy has three major power blocks who all have space travel, except it’s so secret most of the world doesn’t know!
It starts with another secretive project to utilise the obscure maths required for space travel by a small team who don’t know others have already solved the problems and have their own, much larger secret projects.
I really should read vol 3 to see how it all finishes.
Very temporarily.
Haha! Until the fourth or fifth book of the trilogy.
I can think of a lot of examples but almost all are situations where interstellar travel was introduced to Earth by spacefaring extraterrestrials.