Scalzi might be a good one, to be honest.
Oh, I sent the link to her and she sez hello.
Sounds good! And I’ll just hype Ninefox Gambit one more time: it’s deliciously strange space opera, like if Feineman took some bad acid and wrote Warhammer fan-fic, in the best possible way.
I second that recommendation, of course. I’d just finished re-reading “Children of the Lens” back in early 2000 when I decided to register as a poster here at SDMB. Hence my posting name.
Klono’s brazen hoofs and diamond-tipped horns!
We’re waving!
Hey, sign up (without John knowing) and join in the fun!
If you play Settlers, we know you’re smart, fun and… already on the road to nerd-dom. Sorry, but some sci-fi is in your future even if you try to resist. But “Spaaaace Oppppera” (said like “Pigs In Space”) might be too much… I’ve got to be in the mood to really think.
Oh, reciprocate by giving John your favorite book(s).
And, off topic, feel free to tell John to shut up once in a while. We do!
Anything by Peter F Hamilton.
I think Pandora’s Star really exemplifies everything I like in a space opera - deep themes regarding technology and how they impact human culture, multiple interlocking narratives from all strata of society, shit blowing up all over the place, and a depth where it wasn’t needed, but welcome (Paula Myo’s backstory). I just hated how the 2nd book ended in a damn chase sequence. Such a disappointment and that, by itself, gets Pandora’s Star voted off this island.
All of these.
For a single book, that stands alone and talks about the interaction of technology and society, maybe Forever War? There are sequels, but they’re not necessary to enjoy the first book—it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger.
I’ll risk revealing what a lightweight I am and suggest Asimov’s Foundation series.
I would recommend Elizabeth Moon’s Serrano Series. I didn’t tackle them in order - I picked up a Baen Special: Once a Hero, about midway through the greater arc, for about 2 bucks and then later discovered the remaining volumes. Whilst there’s (mis)adventure galor, there is also in various of the books, discussion of the effects of rejuvenation on greater society, as well as thought around an effectively hereditary military caste in at least two different contexts. The politics aren’t nearly as weighty or overbearing as the latter part of Weber’s Honor Harrington.
-DF
ETA: James Alan Gardner’s League of Peoples is a decent series as well, well worth a read and each novel is fairly self contained. Again an interesting exploration of the effects of a major what if (What if there was a universally applied 100% effective prohibition on violence?) on the human societies described. You would want to start with Vigilant, or Expendable.
ETA- Again - For TV Series for You, have you seen Babylon 5? If the somewhat dated effects don’t throw you off, it is a very solid space opera T.V. series covering an intended 5 year arc.
Has “The Mote in God’s Eye” been mentioned?
Might as well go back to the classics. I recommend Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein.
I just came in to recommend the same book. “Have Space Suit - Will Travel” is another one. It’s the same basic story arc as Star Wars. Young Restless kid itching for adventure finds it in spades.
Stephen R. Donaldson’s Gap Cycle series is a very intelligent, well-written space opera… but it’s also exactly the kind of story that the term “trigger warning” was invented for, so if you have a problem with people doing horrible things to other people, best steer clear.
Banks wasn’t tech-porn. He wrote character-forward work, and the plot was always the main focus. Sometimes the characters were the tech, but that doesn’t mean it was about the tech.
Cherryh’s Chanur series is pretty good.
I would say it’s a very good starting point for a lady who is a) into action movies and b) would enjoy a series written from a feminist perspective.
The first book especially has many incredibly tense action scenes.
Set in Cherryh’s Alliance-Union universe, but in a different region of space inhabited by numerous alien spacefaring civilizations, the Chanur novels are unusually realistic examples of space opera, with ship-to-ship shooting minimized in favor of coercion, manipulation, politics, pride contests, and clashing economic interests, driven in many cases by species-to-species miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Tech porn has many long descriptive passages of the fine details of how technology works. I opened a Banks book, looked at a few early paragraphs, and picked this one:
With no interval to provide a margin for error at all, the drone shunted its personality from its own AI core to its back-up picofoam complex and at the same time readied the signal cascade that would transfer its most important concepts, programs and instructions first to electronic nanocircuitry, then to an atomechanical substrate and finally - absolutely as a last resort - to a crude little (though at several cubic centimetres also wastefully large) semi-biological brain. The drone shut off and shut down what had been its true mind, the only place it had ever really existed in all its life, and let whatever pattern of consciousness had taken root there perish for lack of energy, its collapsing consciousness impinging on the machine’s new mind as a faint, informationless exhalation of neutrinos.
Banks absolutely, positively, unequivocally, beyond any shadow of a doubt whatsoever wrote tech porn.
You characterized this as
And that is absolutely, positively, unequivocally, beyond any shadow of a doubt whatsoever not true for Banks.
And a paragraph you admit to cherry-picking doesn’t change that.
Fine, dude, whatever. I’m not interested in playing your game.
Fire Upon the Deep And A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge?