Need a recommendation (space exploration sci-fi)

SpaceSauce

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Hey guys, this is my first post, so I apologize if this is the wrong sub-forum or anything like that.

Basically, I need a book recommendation:

Specifically, what I'm looking for are sci-fi books that deal with Space Exploration. As in, humans going into deep space for the first time, going into the unknown. (Traveling around our own solar system doesn't count, it has to be other solar systems other than our own (though not necessarily other galaxies)).

I am not looking for stuff like the Foundation series by Asimov (although, I loved Foundation and thought it was excellent, it is just not the specific type of book I'm looking for right now). In foundation (as well as other famous space series like Star Wars (the book versions) etc, the problem is that in those books/series, the space-setting is already pre-established/discovered/settled/etc. Like, there is already a Galactic federation in place, they already know where all the various planets and stars are, and which humans/aliens live in which places. They already have politics and wars going on etc.

That is not the type of thing I'm looking for right now.

I'm looking for something more along the lines of, it's humanities first foray into the great unknown galaxy around them. They are looking to discovery new planets and/or aliens for the first time etc. That sort of thing.

So, basically something that isn't so much about shooting laser guns at alien enemies that were already known to the main characters at the beginning of the book, but rather, space explorers on their maiden voyage into deep unknown space, just looking to see what's out there and discovering stuff along the way.

Alright, so if anyone knows any books that fall into that sub-category of space sci, I would appreciate any recommendations very much.

Thanks!
 
How about colonising a planet, then discovering aliens, and subsequently travelling through space to an alien culture?

Perhaps not quite what you're looking for (as they're not intentionally explorers), but you could try Crossfire, by Nancy Kress. A good read, anyway. :)
 
Well, it's not EXACTLY what I'm looking for, but it's still close enough that I will definitely check it out. Thanks man

(But, if others see this thread, and have other books that you think are what I am looking for or are somewhat close to what I'm looking for, please feel free to add to the list! The more the better!)
 
Maybe David Brin's Uplift series. I can't now remember whether it starts with the aliens already known to humanity or not. (Puts it on mental list for re-read. :))

Maybe someone else on here can comment on whether it starts at the right point for you.
 
Again, not entirely as described, but I think rather close: The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Though it isn't humanity's first trip outside local space, it is their first in this direction, and their first encounter with this alien species.

Of course, Heinlein did a few of these, from Methuselah's Children on (including various of his juveniles, such as Time for the Stars, Tunnel in the Sky, etc.), some of which deal with already-established routes, others with unknown territory.

Vernor Vinge's A Fire in the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky might be closer to what you're looking for.
 
Jack McDevitt. The prose is a bit bland, but it pretty much fits your requirement - either the Academy series or the Alex Benedict series, though the former probably more than the latter. Also some of Gregory Benford's novels might suit - Across the Sea of Suns, for example. Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds certainly fits and is much more recent - as in actually published this century.
 
Perhaps not quite what you're looking for (as they're not intentionally explorers), but you could try Crossfire, by Nancy Kress. A good read, anyway. :)

Good suggestion. And the sequel, Crucible, is also worthwhile. Quite a bit of "discovery" involved regarding the nature of alien thinking and culture.

Ian's suggestion of Pushing Ice is also good. Again, it involves alien entities that are not easy to figure out.
 
Wow, thanks guys this is awesome. I posted this question in my regular forums that I normally post on that have nothing to do with books or sci-fi in their Off Topic sections and, as you might expect, didn't exactly much in the way of responses. I've been mainly just reading graphic novels for the past couple years, and the occasional literary fiction short story, but have never really read sci-fi much, other than what was required in school and maybe a dozen or so random ones that I read for fun prior to going to college. So I've been meaning to get back into sci-fi for quite a while, but had this specific sub-genre in mind and had no clue where to begin so I just kept putting it off and reading other stuff instead lol (in retrospect, that was astonishingly lazy of me, but oh well, lol).

Anyway, I'm going to look into a bunch of these books and probably buy most of them.

I'll tell you guys how I like them (might be a while since I'm a slow reader).

Thanks!
 
Okay, well I just ordered most of these books from Amazon just now, so waiting for them to come in the mail!

But one last thing I forgot to ask btw:

Which (if any) of these do not have any supernatural element to them? Because, I would like to begin with whichever one has none, or the least amount of supernatural stuff, like whichever one is closest to hard or "straight" sci-fi, like no mystical stuff of spiritual ethers or stuff like that, but rather, just regular space ships exploring the universe in a more NASA-ish sort of way. Like, obviously there has to be some amount of fudging around with various things given that the technology has to be made-up stuff in order to go off into deep space, but, what I mean is, allowing for that, which of these books has the least "out there"/fantasy-ish"/supernatural/spiritual stuff in it (I'll still read those ones too, but, I just want to start with the most straight-scifi one if I can is all).

Thanks
 
Greg Benford's is probably the hardest - where hard sf sticks to known sciences the most closely. Most other space-based hard sf tends to be limited to the Solar system - such as Paul McAuley's The Quiet War. His Eternal Light, however, does fit your requirements.
 
Cool.

So, all 6 of the books I ordered so far (Pushing Ice, Sundiver, Across the Sea of Suns, Time for the Stars, The Mote in God's Eye, and The Voyage of the Space Beagle) have arrived!

I was just wondering... I think I want to begin with "Across the Sea of Suns" by Gregory Benford, but, I noticed that it's the second book in a series, with "In the Ocean of Night" being the first book, before it. Would you guys say it would be pretty inadvisable to start with Across the Sea of Suns without having read In the Ocean of Night, or is it not that big a deal and can easily just start with Across the Sea of Suns without having read the previous book?

Also, does the initial voyage into space begin in OCEAN, or is that book more like just the setup of mankind getting to the point where it decide to explore space and then that's where ACROSS begins, like, at the start of man's exploration into deep space?

(try not to spoil anything in your answers if possible)
 
Ah, my fault. I forgot there was a first book. I think it can be read on its own, though.

Be prepared for some very old-fashioned sf with The Voyage of the Space Beagle, and The Mote in God's Eye is closer to space opera than hard sf.
 
While it starts in the solar system, there is definitely exploration of the unknown beyond that in the Rama series (Rendevzous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke and Rama II, Garden of Rama and Rama Revealed by Clarke and Gentry Lee).
 
Thanks, I'll check it out.

Also, I've been looking over some of the bigger names in sci-fi to see which ones were atheist/agnostic and which ones were more religious/spiritual. (I'm an agnostic-atheist, so I figure some of the well known agnostic-atheist sci-fi writers will probably be more my speed than some of the more religious or spiritual guys (obviously there will always be exceptions to the rule, I'm just saying, in general, like, on average or whatever).

So, it looks like Clarke, Niven, Benford, Heinlein, and Asimov were all atheist and/or agnostic, so I guess I'm gonna just look through the list of all the books all of those guys have written and see if there are any others by those guys that match or somewhat match the sub-category of space exploration sci-fi that I'm looking for.

But, I'm sure there are probably also a ton of other good atheist/agnostic sci-fi writers out there (and, hopefully some of the more recent variety, I don't want all my books to be from the 70's and earlier if I can help it, lol, I wanna get a few books from the 21st century too), so, if you guys know any other good sci-fi writers, particularly newer/younger sci-fi writers who are in their prime right now, that are atheist/agnostic in their views and writing style, for me to add to the list to look into the works of, please feel free to add some more author's names for me to check out. Especially if they have multiple works that are either in, or close to being in the sub-category discussed in this thread. And also especially ones that are more hard-scifi rather than space-opera in style. I am not too interested in space opera as of right now, to be honest (although it can have a little personal drama stuff going on I guess, but not where it's like the whole meat of the book is the drama stuff and only 1% of the book is dealing with any deep, hard science, astronomy/science concepts and theories, and the rest is just emotional filler fluff. That's not my cup of tea, I prefer it to be the other way around, with a little fluff (if any) and mostly just cool thought provoking science/astronomy exploration type of stuff from a more NASA-ish standpoint.

Sorry if I'm sounding absurdly picky by the way lol, that's not how I meant this post to come across at all, it's just that I'm new around here, so I want to give you all a "feel" for what type of stuff I am into/not as into etc to make it easier for you guys to give recommendations.

EDIT: Oh, and just to clarify: by no means am I saying that I don't want to read sci-fi books written by non-atheists, nor am I saying that I think one needs to be an atheist to be a good sci-fi writer. Far from it. Obviously there are plenty of great sci-fi writers who are religious or spiritual, and have written books that I would be interested in. I know that. In fact, I know it from personal experience, since I've read some good sci-fi books by religious authors that I still enjoyed thoroughly. So yea just wanted to clarify that so I don't come off sounding like some snobby atheists-only-club guy or anything, I was just trying to give you guys an overall feel of what my personal tastes are ON AVERAGE/IN GENERAL basically, is all. Alright, hopefully that'll clear up any misunderstandings that this post otherwise might have caused.
 
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Some others I didn't see mentioned that might more or less fit (depending on my memory and your strictness):

  • Poul Anderson - The Enemy Stars
  • Greg Bear - Anvil of Stars (an interstellar sequel to an earth-based book, The Forge of God)
  • John W. Campbell - the Arcot, Morey, and Wade series
  • John W. Campbell - The Mightiest Machine
  • C.J. Cherryh - the Chanur series (this is basically only one human from a starfaring culture, but he's willy-nilly exploring a new region of space)
  • Robert L. Forward - Dragon's Egg (a neutron star comes to us, so it doesn't entirely fit but I don't see why exploring our solar system or its surrounding wouldn't count)
  • Robert L. Forward - The Flight of the Dragonfly aka Rocheworld (this qualifies, regardless)
  • Murray Leinster - Colonial Survey aka The Planet Explorer (though we're spacegoing so this isn't a "maiden voyage" thing)
  • Charles Sheffield - Between the Strokes of Night (highly recommended)
  • Doc Smith - the Skylark series
  • Allen Steele - Hex (fictionally deficient but conceptually a blast)
  • Charles Stross - Accelerando (won't seem like it fits at first, but it gets there)
  • Timothy Zahn - Spinneret (extra suspicious of my memory here, but I think it fits)

I want to throw in things like Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, as well. Like parts of the Forward, it's much more planet-based than space-based (Forward has plenty of space, too, though) and, like some of the listed ones, humans are spacegoing already, but it's very much an "exploration not in this system" sort of book, even if the inhabitants of Mesklin (the feature planet in Mission of Gravity) aren't so much exploring an alien world, since it's their own planet. But you, the reader, are exploring. :)

Of what you ordered I liked Time for the Stars and Voyage of the Space Beagle. I had extreme problems with Pushing Ice but it definitely had good aspects. I didn't like Sundiver or Across the Sea of Suns so much (actually, I don't even remember which Galactic Center novel is which - the whole series didn't quite work for me). They weren't terrible or anything, though. And I've finally gotten The Mote in God's Eye in the pile, so we'll see. So when you finish reading those, maybe that'll give some index into how the above list might suit you.

Regardless of creed, you can't do much better than "the Big Three" of Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. :)
 
Some others I didn't see mentioned that might more or less fit (depending on my memory and your strictness):

  • Poul Anderson - The Enemy Stars
  • Greg Bear - Anvil of Stars (an interstellar sequel to an earth-based book, The Forge of God)
  • John W. Campbell - the Arcot, Morey, and Wade series
  • John W. Campbell - The Mightiest Machine
  • C.J. Cherryh - the Chanur series (this is basically only one human from a starfaring culture, but he's willy-nilly exploring a new region of space)
  • Robert L. Forward - Dragon's Egg (a neutron star comes to us, so it doesn't entirely fit but I don't see why exploring our solar system or its surrounding wouldn't count)
  • Robert L. Forward - The Flight of the Dragonfly aka Rocheworld (this qualifies, regardless)
  • Murray Leinster - Colonial Survey aka The Planet Explorer (though we're spacegoing so this isn't a "maiden voyage" thing)
  • Charles Sheffield - Between the Strokes of Night (highly recommended)
  • Doc Smith - the Skylark series
  • Allen Steele - Hex (fictionally deficient but conceptually a blast)
  • Charles Stross - Accelerando (won't seem like it fits at first, but it gets there)
  • Timothy Zahn - Spinneret (extra suspicious of my memory here, but I think it fits)

I want to throw in things like Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, as well. Like parts of the Forward, it's much more planet-based than space-based (Forward has plenty of space, too, though) and, like some of the listed ones, humans are spacegoing already, but it's very much an "exploration not in this system" sort of book, even if the inhabitants of Mesklin (the feature planet in Mission of Gravity) aren't so much exploring an alien world, since it's their own planet. But you, the reader, are exploring. :)

Of what you ordered I liked Time for the Stars and Voyage of the Space Beagle. I had extreme problems with Pushing Ice but it definitely had good aspects. I didn't like Sundiver or Across the Sea of Suns so much (actually, I don't even remember which Galactic Center novel is which - the whole series didn't quite work for me). They weren't terrible or anything, though. And I've finally gotten The Mote in God's Eye in the pile, so we'll see. So when you finish reading those, maybe that'll give some index into how the above list might suit you.

Regardless of creed, you can't do much better than "the Big Three" of Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. :)

Awesome post!

Thanks for the time and thought into this! Looks like I'll definitely have some more books to add to the collection.

I actually ended up picking Time for the Stars to begin reading first, out of the 6 books I bought. Just started it, only about 30 pages in or so. The dialogue of the twins has an old fashioned vibe to it (obviously, since it was written in the 1950's), but is still pretty humorous and charming stuff regardless. I get the feeling that, if the year right now were the year that that book was first published, Heinlein's writing style would probably be deemed extremely "hip", by sci-fi standards. His style just seems really... cool... I dunno how else to explain it. I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy this book a lot.
 
Avoid EE 'Doc' Smith - those books were written in the 1930s and it shows. Cherryh is good but not much she's done qualifies as "space exploration" per se. Check out the reviews of her books on SF Mistressworks here. Actually, you should probably look a bit beyond the testes-fest most people have suggested on this thread. There are a number of novels by women sf writers who might fit the bill. Endless Voyage by Marion Zimmer Bradley is one, though it's not very good. The Buonarotti Quartet by Gwyneth Jones is a collection of four related stories and is very good indeed. Some of Le Guin's stories are about exploration, such as 'Vaster Than Empires And More Slow' or 'The Shobies' Story'.
 
Yea, personally I definitely don't care what gender the author is, as long as the book itself is good, that's the only thing that matters to me. I mean, hell, I'd probly read a sci-fi book written by Ted Bundy or Adolf Hitler if the actual book itself was good, you know what I mean lol? Like, as far as my eyeballs are concerned as they read the book, the only thing that really matters is what's going on in the book/if I find it good/enjoyable. Well, maybe that's not 100.0% true, only 99% true, since I guess in some cases the real life social climate in relation to the author at the time the book was written can add some extra nuances/things to ponder whilst reading the book, but like, in general yea, I pretty much just strictly care about the book itself basically.
 

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