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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

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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.

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[–] MrBobDobalina@lemmy.ml 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not quite what you're after but I absolutely love Diaspora by Greg Egan.

It's a different take on the same issues you're asking about (not at first, but it's not really a spoiler to say that it explores them whether or not it's as necessary as your examples state), a take that leans more into different forms of existence rather than supporting our current existence in a different environment (but touches on aspects of that too, kind of). It's mega-multi-generational while also not being that at all, depending on perspective.

[–] Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not quite what you’re after but I absolutely love Diaspora by Greg Egan.

Came here to say that it's the BOOK OP is looking for , Moreover, it's one of the authors present on the fediverse @gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz

I don't know how the original version works, but in the French translation Francis Lustman made a real effort in building a coherent grammar with neo-pronoms which match very well the book tone, and is a great exercise.

However, Diaspora isn't the most accessible Egan book. I mean, if you never heard about stuff like complex conjugate, or Penrose tiles you'll struggle with some of the concept.

[–] MrBobDobalina@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

It was my first real Sci fi book haha. Definitely a struggle but I was hooked once I started grasping even a sense of what was going on in the conceptory at the beginning.

From there, I understood what I understood, and let the other concepts flow over me in a way. Sometimes they'd click once I was a few chapters deeper and something that was discussed earlier came into effect and I'd go back and re read, other things made more sense when I read the whole thing again years later.

Reading it, I definitely didn't get the full intended effect that someone with more knowledge would have, but it still managed to stick with me for decades now and absolutely shaped my Sci fi tastes