Asklemmy

43905 readers

1155 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

214

Does anyone know any Hard Sci Fi books about humans surviving without any hospitable worlds? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 9 months ago by GlitchyDigiBun@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

99 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm looking to get inspiration for my own writing. I need a hard sci fi series where earth (and earthlike worlds) are too rare, inaccessible, and/or previously spoiled beyond ability to sustain life. Bonus points if it is set on a multi-generational space station or starship without any other options and goes into detail about life support, living space, mineral mining and expansion of the station to accomodate a growing population, and daily life of it's residents.

If anyone remembers Drifter Colonies from Titan A.E., that's what's in my head.

I'm looking for The Martian levels of realism, and I'm fine with a bit of "Unobtanium" clichés if they're not core to the story.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Klordok@lemmy.world 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The Children of Time books by Adrian Tchaikovsky have a lot of those themes. Half of the first book is about an ark ship sent out to find a habitable planet because earth is dying. It spans hundreds of years as key crew members go in and out of hyper sleep. Relationships and political factions form and dissolve as the ageing ship continues its mission to find a new home.

The second book focuses on a terraforming crew that was sent to another star system to prepare a planet for humans. However, the planet's ecology is so alien it proves very difficult to gain a foothold.

[–] herrcaptain@lemmy.ca 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'll second this (though I've only read the first thus far). I don't know that I'd consider it especially hard SciFi but it's far from a space opera. I recall feeling like the justification for the creation of the arachnid race was a bit hand-wavey, but the level of thought put into their society more than made up for the required suspension of disbelief. Definitely one of my favorite books.

For something similar I'd also recommend Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. It's about the discovery of intelligent life on a neutron star, who develop at a rate exponentially faster than humanity. Also not super hard SciFi, but a great exploration into truly alien life.

[–] TheaoneAndOnly27@kbin.social 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I really enjoyed the first and could not get into the second in the children of time series

[–] gears@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

There's a third now, I need to read it still. I liked the second, though

[–] TheaoneAndOnly27@kbin.social 3 points 9 months ago

It's possible Just wasn't the flavor I was looking for at the time. I'll give another go at some point. I hear great things from people so it's probably just send me a thing

[–] Klordok@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I loved the first two, but I had a hard time getting through the third. It has interesting concepts but it takes a long time to make its point. Plot structure spoilers:

Spoiler

The main reveal should have happened half way through, not at the end.

Apologies for mobile formatting