How about The Firestar Saga by Michael Flynn?
I don’t think Hamilton is tech-porn, that’s one of the things I like about his books. There is a lot of tech, to be sure…but not much in the way of explanation about how it works.
I always thought, rather cynically, that the portal technology was created to help the pacing of the books, certain plot lines become a LOT easier when the characters can just, in effect, take the subway from planet to planet. And sometimes the “tech” is just straight up magic, like the Silfen paths.
And while the rejuvenation and re-life technologies are heavily discussed from a philosophical point of view, IIRC there’s approximately zero in the way of technical explanation on that tech.
I think in a lot of ways I like Hamilton because his novels are more like action-adventure novels set in a space-faring future than hard sci-fi. And I like it that he writes so many primary characters that AREN’T politicians or military.
It’s very… very… slow as an introduction to the genre for someone who likes action movies.
I didn’t mind the slowness or the intricacies of culture and language, but I gave up about a third of the way through A Memory Called Empire for other reasons.
The characters and culture-building simply didn’t ring true to me. The characters all seemed to me to be 21st century Americans with present day attitudes and conversations. The society was supposed to be based on Byzantium, but it felt inconsistent and didn’t make sense to me.
INteresting. There are a fair number of books where I have the “misplaced modern sensibilities” reaction, but this wasn’t one of them. Nor did I find it especially slow. To each their own!
Likewise. It starts almost immediately with a mysteriously dead body, after all. But mileage varies.
Yes Hamilton is extremely accessible which is he’s often near the top of best seller lists. But while the science is not too deep he does still manage to create a high level of geek excitement with his descriptions of extreme tech or weird aliens. And he has such an imagination it often becomes a bit dubious. His novels are a LOT of fun to read.
But yeah not teach porn. He’s exploring humanity.
I agree kitap!
So here’s my one recommendation, a long-time favorite of mine, a standalone novel with everything (spaceships, magic, strong female characters, a galactic threat, comedy, robots even):
James’s Schmitz’s “The Witches of Karres”
(FWIW my commander in “Elite Dangerous” is named James Pausert, the protagonist of “Witches.”)
These are great, but where to start…how about Ringworld? I’d save the Man-Kzin war stuff (mostly by other authors) until later, if they become Niven addicts… 
Witches of Karres is a lot of fun.
The problem with the characters in A Memory called Empire is that they are basically just the author in different guises. (That’s the case in many books.)
The characters are not truly different, they don’t think differently, they don’t see the world differently. Martine hasn’t made an effort to ‘imagine herself into other minds’, or hasn’t succeeded. And despite the superficial differences, the conversations in the book strike me as probably having a similar quality to those the author has with her 21st century friends.
I find that I’ve become less tolerant of second rate characters in books as I grow older.
As for the world building, there’s another current thread “Most realistic depiction of dictatorship in sci-fi?”
To which one answer is ‘NOT the autocracy in Memory’.
Again, interesting–while I’ve leveled this criticism at other novels, that’s not at all how I remember this one. But at this point, I think further discussion of this one work would be best suited for a separate thread.
You just described all the Becky Chambers books, too.
I agree! Except she’s far worse… so bad it’s almost entertaining. 
Y’all, we got real different taste in literature.
I enjoy Poul Anderson, a physicist who became a science fiction author.
Dominic Flandry is a naval intelligence officer for the Terran empire. Several hundred years earlier, David Falkyn is an intergallactic trader working for Nicholas van Rijn.
There are many novels and short stories. Ensign Flandry and Satan’s World for Falkyn come to mind. There are interesting aliens and cultures.
One of, if not the, favorite science fiction novels is Inverted World. The main part of the novel starts out with “I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles”. There’s a lot of drama in the story and a mind-boggling ending.
Another one is Rite of Passage, whose protagonist is a young girl rapidly approaching the literally life and death rite of passage into adulthood her society–one set in a large spaceship constructed from an asteroid–requires every child to experience upon reaching 14 years of age. Again, a lot of drama.
Those are always suggested, in threads like these - and for very good reason.
A couple of them that could be read as standalones are:
Falling Free (one of Bujold’s earliest books; predates most of them by 200 years)
Ethan of Athos (“alongside” the main Vorkosigan saga, but you don’t have to know the main tale to enjoy this).
The Warrior’s Apprentice (Miles, age 17, goes to visit his grandmother and accidentally creates a space mercenary fleet)
The Vor Game (he’s graduated from the military academy, and winds up back with the mercenary fleet for a bit).
Ooh - speaking of Scalzi:
Redshirts
Premise: a bunch of new officers on a starship start to realize that something is really screwy. Any mission winds up with someone dead, but the captain and a couple of other higher-ups, who are always on those missions, seem to survive injury after illness after disaster, and pop right back to health within a few days.
Very good tale (won a Hugo); will be quite relatable to anyone who’s ever even HEARD of Star Trek, and is not nearly as fluff-like as you might think going in with that premise.
Do NOT get the audiobook version though - Wil Wheaton did the narration and frankly it was awful, awful, awful.
No sequel, but very enjoyable for a one-and-done.
And the winner is…
I chose Hyperion for a number of reasons:
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I already had it
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It’s more accessible than many of the space operas which followed, like Ian Banks and KSR. You don’t need to know advanced scientific principles to fully appreciate the work behind the work, the society involved is largely like our own (for reasons explained in the book) and doesn’t require a lot of explanation (for example, Dune and its appendices and glossary).
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A lot of space operas… and here I’m writing for m’ lady mostly… are structured so they have wildly differing stories which weave together at the end. Pulling an example made up right now, one story will follow a janitor, another an astronomer, another a reporter, another the President of a large company, another the Secretary of Defense… and at the end of the book, the author brings all these various strands together so that all the different characters you’re following end up being instrumental in the conflict resolution phase of the story. Hyperion is a fantastic entry into this form of storytelling because the author wrote it in the model of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with the characters on a journey and each of them telling their tales of how they came to be on this journey. (He also wrote each story in the voice of different science fiction writers (the Poets Tale is so Harlan Ellison it’s almost ass-kissy) which is cool but not at all necessary to know in order to enjoy it.)
Had I gone with, say, Pandora’s Star you would have been confused by why there’s a murder trial in the first 200 pages and that would have been that. Hyperion is far less confusing.
- It’s one of the highest-regarded science fiction works of our lifetimes and even those who didn’t like it cannot deny its influence. It truly informed a generation of writers that science fiction could be literature and not just genre, and any one working in the field afterwards had no choice but up their writing game. All of written science fiction is in better shape because of Hyperion, which is a rare achievement for any work in any field.
Hope you enjoy!
you can toss in the *the stainless steel rat * series by Harry Harrison
most of them are quick exciting and not too long … although you do get the idea that he’s parodying the genre occasionally