Eric... No reason to go past Gateway (first novel in HeeChee) the rest are pretty out there. I agree that it was disturbing but that is kind of how I imagine our first interstellar travels are going to be...really disturbing and uncertain. The Expanse by James SA Corey are like that also, where travel is scary even though it is routine.
Fletcher... I started the Spineward Novels and cant seem to put them down. Thanks!
Oh, just thought of another author I enjoyed greatly. Alternate History is really good when it is written by a good author, otherwise it can be pretty dumb. The best I have seen is Harry Turtledove. If you want to try it out, check out "The Guns of the South". It is amazing!
Even he has done some hackwork since then, but after that, the WorldWar series was pretty cool.
I also like "In Her Name" Michael Hicks (the first trilogy more than the second), "Old Man's War" John Scalzi and the "Spinward Fringe" Randolph Lalonde series. Some others that I would recommend;"Man of War" series Harvey Phillps (outstanding military fiction but still waiting for book 3), "Legend of Zero" series Sara King (great characters also waiting for book 3), "Empire's Corps" Christopher Nuttall (six books and counting good military sci-fi with a libertarian bent), "RCN Leary/Mundy" series by David Drake (9 books and counting). If you can find them; "Terms of Enlistment" and "Lucky Thirteen" (a great short in the same universe) by Marko Kloos.
Not military sci-fi but a really enjoyable read... "Trader's Tales or Tales of the Solar Clipper" series Nathan Lowell (6 books written but the final book is currently being re-edited before it is released again).
I hope this helps, I am going to check out some of the books listed here as well.
I had a thought. Anyone read the latest in the Old Man series by John Scalzi? The Human Division was a serialized novel, where they released a self-contained chapter each week. by counting on the anxiety of the readers to get "the latest" they wound up charging more for the whole book, because you paid $0.99 for each chapter, while the whole book (later on) went for $11 or less.
I bring it up not for the book but the method of distribution. It was the first time I'd seen the "pay per chapter" method. Ryk is giving us a lot more per $, but I thought it was an interesting model and might lead to an interesting discussion.
What if Ryk gave us not a whole book every two months, but say, a chapter per week? At $0.49 or $0.99 per chapter?
A couple days ago I finished reading through the Koban series. There are a number of points where the story was slow and the detail excessive (book length could have been reduced to a half or even a third), but overall rather interesting reads with a good number of rather amusing bits. Just sad the next one won't be out for a few months.
There's probably room for the books (~600 pages each, so about 20 hours of reading each for me) to be broken up like what Ryk is doing (200-300 pages each) and released faster.
Seems like I'll put a higher priority on reading Spineward Sectors, as it sounds like it's certainly worth giving a try. I'm thinking I have the first book as a freebie, but haven't gotten around to reading it.
@Eric Nay: It seems like it takes a certain kind of author to be able to publish chapter by chapter like that and end up with a solid book overall. It might work out well enough. Though I'm not sure I'd like to buy chapter at a time. Not sure about others, but I typically prefer a rate of 100 (+-50 or so) pages per dollar (US) for ebooks. Figuring it takes 10 weeks to write a book, and the books are around 300 pages, that puts it around 30 pages per week. While on the high side, around $0.20 to $0.60 sounds reasonable enough for those 30 pages or so. I probably wouldn't buy if it was priced at $1. The only downside would be that it would add a lot of "clutter" to the kindle to buy by the chapter since kindle isn't setup that way.
I enjoyed reading Peter F Hamilton books. They seemed a little less comic book-like than some of the other sci-fi I have read in the past. Trilogies: Commonwealth Saga, Void Trilogy, and The Night's Dawn kept my attention and I have found myself thinking about them well after they were read.
Also, if you haven't read Hugh Howey's Wool books, you should do that post haste. The last installment was recently released although there is lots of room for more things to happen in the Wool universe.
Solar Clipper series.. Amazing!!!
I'm a bit of a read-aholic, and have read ALL of the books listed in this thread, but I really resonated with Shane's list quoted below. As for the Solar Clipper, you can listen to them for free. Nathan Lowell (the author) narrated his own books and does it really well...okay,the first one is a bit rough, but he really gets into the groove in the subsequent books. You can find them on Podiobooks and also on Apples Podcast app for iPhone. All free!
I also strongly recommend:
"Hawk Seven" by Robert Little
http://www.amazon.com/Hawk-Seven-Flight-Robert-Little-ebook/dp/B004N62OKQ/ref=cm_cr-mr-title
"To Honor You Call Us (Man of War)" and its sequel by Paul Honsinger and Harvey Phillips
http://www.amazon.com/Honor-You-Call-Man-War-ebook/dp/B00A1VFFVM/ref=cm_cr-mr-title
And for a much less serious book, more stylistically like Ryk's Frontier series, I'd recommend the "Scout Force (Kelly Blake)" series by Rodney Smith
http://www.amazon.com/Scout-Force-Kelly-Blake-Series-ebook/dp/B005HJ3560/ref=cm_cr-mr-title
From Shane:
I also like “In Her Name” Michael Hicks (the first trilogy more than the second), “Old Man’s War” John Scalzi and the “Spinward Fringe” Randolph Lalonde series. Some others that I would recommend;”Man of War” series Harvey Phillps (outstanding military fiction but still waiting for book 3), “Legend of Zero” series Sara King (great characters also waiting for book 3), “Empire’s Corps” Christopher Nuttall (six books and counting good military sci-fi with a libertarian bent), “RCN Leary/Mundy” series by David Drake (9 books and counting). If you can find them; “Terms of Enlistment” and “Lucky Thirteen” (a great short in the same universe) by Marko Kloos.
Not military sci-fi but a really enjoyable read… “Trader’s Tales or Tales of the Solar Clipper” series Nathan Lowell (6 books written but the final book is currently being re-edited before it is released again).
I hope this helps, I am going to check out some of the books listed here as well.
Well, I did see Ender's Game with my son. A reasonably good adaptation, pretty much taken from the short story version, and slightly expanded and changed. They threw away having all space travel limited by the speed of light, and only communications could be FTL. I don't know if the audience would realize that had Ender's dad made it through the Academy, he would have been on one of those ships--this was a multi-generational effort. At least they changed the alien's name to the Formics. Formic acid was first discovered and isolated from insects. The original name would have been pretty offensive.
Can anyone recommend me anything with big space battles? I'm reading the human chronicles at the moment and loving it. I'm just starting part too, but I'm seriously withdrawing / having a hard time finding straight up run of the mill big arse fleet galactic war space battles. Are there any out there?
I really liked some of the books in Thomas Deprima's A Galaxy Unknown series.
Sounds like star carrier series might be to my liking, but if anyone can make some recommendations for me I'd like that very much 🙂
David Colwell, look at "The Lost Fleet: Dauntless" by Jack Campbell. It is the closest thing I have seen to Ryk's work. I liked the first series a lot, stopped buying them when the author went off to do two other series, but really good space battles. Very intricate maneuvering with light speed as a major factor.
David Colwell, a few suggestions off the top of my head. Although it depends how large is large when it comes to space fleets, as such I've included ones with interesting fleet battles, even if they are perhaps on the small side. Only the first one I know for sure used fairly large fleets, other than previously mentioned, The Lost Fleet. I'm thinking Troy rising may have dealt with medium (20-100) ships, while the others probably dealt with smaller battles of upwards of 20 ships. The lost fleet deals with fleet battles involving 100+ ships, and I'm thinking the Honorverse deals with similar numbers, but it's been a while.
David Weber's Honorverse
John Ringos's Troy Rising
Evan Currie's Warrior's Wings
Evan Currie's Oddesy One
And since you mentioned Human Chronicles, you might like Joshua Dalzelle's Omega Force.
Thanks guys 🙂
For an old classic, Skylark of Space, Lensmen, and Triplanetary had huge battles. In fact the battles were so large, some of the weapons were converted stars brought in from nearby galaxies. On the other hand, at that scale, there isn't a lot of real drama.
Of course, I'm biased. After all, they were written by "E.E." Doc Smith. Squeak!
From Wikipedia:
"The Skylark of Space by Edward E. "Doc" Smith was written between 1915 and 1921 while Smith was working on his doctorate."
Can you imagine the balls of that guy? Writing about moving stars, when airplanes were just a few years old?
