Novels about expeditions & discovery ?

[Watcher07]

Looking for novels that deal with old fashioned sci-fi plots, like a scientific/military expedition sent out to explore mysterious object/event on Earth or other planets. In a way, similar to “Rendezvous with Rama” & “Eon”.


Any suggestions ?

 

[RichF]

Pushing Ice is a good one. It's about a mining crew who are ordered to investigate one of Saturn's moons which suddenly flings off out of its orbit and the subsequent deliberations of the crew who become extremely divided over whether to proceed or not.

 

[hitmouse]

Almost anything published by Jack McDevitt
RingWorld Larry Niven

 

[Vertigo]

Possibly the first couple of books in Gregory Benford's Galactic Centre series: In the Ocean of Night and Across the Sea of Suns. The following books rather move away from that theme.

 

[iansales]

Sean Williams and Shane Dix's Orphans trilogy - Echoes of Earth, Orphans of Earth,
Heirs of Earth - and Geodescia: Ascent and Geodesica: Descent.

Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys.

John Varley's Gaea trilogy - Titan, Wizard, Demon.

 

[Vertigo]

I wondered about the Gaea trilogy. I have them but haven't read them yet so didn't feel I could comment!

 

[Extollager]

James White's All Judgment Fled.

 

[Watcher07]

Thanks all for your recommendations, going to check out these titles.

 

[Gramm838]

Richard Morgan's 'Broken Angels' is based a round an archeological/scrounging story set in deep space, with his usual ultra-violent bits - it's a great read

 

[JoanDrake]

Not SF or even F but the classic of the type, Endurance, by Richard Shackleton. Also "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon" and others in the HeeChee sagas.

 

[Rodders]

Eric Brown's Helix fits the bill.

 

[J-Sun]

Old space opera by Campbell (Arcot, Morey and Wade, but with diminishing returns), Hamilton (Interstellar Patrol, but not all that great), Smith (probably Skylark more than Lensman here) and Williamson (Legion of Space).

Clarke's own A Fall of Moondust and The Deep Range might qualify though it's just to the moon and earth's ocean and doesn't really have a team of explorers or such. But they're both great books,

A list of some more (best fit/quality bold)

• Asimov - Nemesis (exploring a system that threatens our own)
• Bear - Anvil of Stars (mission of hunting and retribution)
• Clement - lots of stuff from Mission of Gravity to Half Life. Mission fits to a 'T'.
• Egan - Schild's Ladder, Incandescence (might be able to shoehorn Diaspora and others in)
• Forward - Dragon's Egg, Flight of the Dragonfly aka Rocheworld - both of these are also perfect fits and great books, especially Dragon's Egg.
• Haldeman - Marsbound (Starbound would also qualify but it's not as good)
• Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness (though the exploration is anthropological rather than physical/technical)
• Leinster - Colonial Survey aka Planet Explorer
• Pohl - Gateway (maybe a stretch, but a great book)
• Sheffield - Between the Strokes of Night (not so much initially intentional exploration but it gets that way and, again, it's a great book)
• Silverberg - The Man in the Maze (more new wavy metaphors than hard metal SF but it does involve a team exploring an alien city to get to the man in the maze and the man has explored aliens to end up in the city)
• Steele - Oceanspace, Hex (again, Oceanspace is just to our own oceans but Hex is a BDO book to a 'T' - but a "Big Smart Object" - it's lacking in not only characterization but plot - but what a setting!)
• Stross - Accelerando (another that doesn't directly start out as extroverted exploration but includes it)
• van Vogt - Voyage of the Space Beagle

Also, I've just sort of started reading Bova's Mars but it looks good and looks to fit (and is probably not the only one in the "Grand Tour" that would). (Which reminds me that Robinson's Mars trilogy would also qualify but I didn't like it much at all,)

 

[Extollager]

Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys.

Indeed -- one of my all-time favorite sf novellas: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 2B.

 

[Extollager]

Looking for novels that deal with old fashioned sci-fi plots, like a scientific/military expedition sent out to explore mysterious object/event on Earth or other planets. In a way, similar to “Rendezvous with Rama” & “Eon”. Any suggestions ?

C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra are superb evocations of imagined worlds. Brian Aldiss excerpted the latter for his anthology All About Venus.

 

[dask]

ANATHEM by Neal Stephenson