I want some spaceship books!

December 2, 2017 1:04 AM

I have a yen for some spaceship books, ragtag crews especially welcome! Jump inside for some more details.

I'm interested in books set predominantly on spaceships. I don't read as much scifi, so I'm not sure exactly what would be good.

Spaceship Books I've liked:
The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold (Warrior's apprentice is a great example of the kind of thing I'm after)
The Ancillary series by Anne Leckie
The Empress Games series by Rhonda Mason

Spaceships Books I didn't like:
A long way to a small angry planet by Becky Chambers
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
I wasn't crazy about Blindsight by Peter Watts (bit too cerebral for what I'm after here)

I was considering dipping my toes in some Iain Banks, but I don't know that I'm after space opera, so much as space sword-and-sorcery.

I'm only up to Memory in the Vorkosigan, perhaps I should just keep reading some of them?

posted by smoke to Media & Arts (21 answers total)

The "Tour of the Merrimack" books by R.M. Meluch. If you liked the Ancillary books, you're probably pretty cool with the Roman Empire in space, and these books have them as a major faction. Not a ragtag crew, though.

"Consider Phlebas" is the first book in the Culture series, set a few hundred years before all the rest of the books, and does contain a ragtag crew of space pirates, looting what they can in the wake of the Culture's retreat from their enemy, the Idiran; among the crew are an agent of the Idiran, and the Culture's agent sent in pursuit. Of the Culture books, it's perhaps the only one that's really set on a spaceship, or among any kind of ensemble crew; most books focus on a smaller number of characters and take place among the Culture's engagements with alien species.

Still in the edit window: Seconding the Human Division bits of Old Man's War. I liked the rest, too, but those are the bits that fit.
posted by Sunburnt at 2:37 AM on December 2, 2017

There is always Metafilter's own John Scalzi's Old Man's War series. I highly recommend the whole series and the last two books, The Human Division and The End of All Things tell the stories of Harry Wilson, one of the early characters, in his later adventures with a space-based diplomat.

C.J. Cherryh - Chanur series:
Set in Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe, but in a different region of space inhabited by numerous alien spacefaring civilizations, the Chanur novels are unusually realistic examples of space opera, with ship-to-ship shooting minimized in favor of coercion, manipulation, politics, pride contests, and clashing economic interests, driven in many cases by species-to-species miscommunication and misunderstanding.
posted by Altomentis at 2:37 AM on December 2, 2017

Also Elizabeth Moon: Vatta's War series
The books follow the adventures of Kylara Vatta, a young member of the Vatta family, which runs the interstellar shipping corporation Vatta Enterprises. She had sought a life outside the family business by enrolling in the Slotter Key Spaceforce Academy, but she is forced to resign in her final year and assigned to captain an old trading ship for the corporation. Her military training is put to good use, however, during the crises she faces, first as a ship captain in dangerous situations, and later as the representative of a family under attack.
posted by Altomentis at 2:46 AM on December 2, 2017

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds has one plot thread aboard an FTL ship crewed by ultranauts (humans augmented for longterm spaceflight).

Reynolds' newest book Revenger is "a tale of space pirates, buried treasure and phantom weapons, of unspeakable hazards and single-minded heroism . . . and of vengeance . . ." (disclaimer: I haven't read it yet).
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:18 AM on December 2, 2017

Space sorcery you say? The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz is right up your alley.
posted by nicwolff at 3:40 AM on December 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

How about the expanse series ? I found them entertaining enough.
Also from Scalzi, the Galactic Empire is not bad either.

I liked all the books you listed, including the ones you didn't like
posted by motdiem2 at 3:47 AM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ann Leckie has a new book out called Provenance. It's set in the same universe as the Ancillary series and you see the impact of some of those events in the background, but it's more of a heisty space thriller. There is indeed a ragtag heist crew.

Most of the book takes place on planets and stations rather than ships, though.
posted by escapepod at 4:33 AM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

I don't know that I'm after space opera, so much as space sword-and-sorcery

By publication order, which I recommend, the first book in the Liaden universe is free. The Mageworlds series is another good option.
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:45 AM on December 2, 2017

Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod, and its two sequels, are set to a large extent on spaceships and are a lot of fun.
posted by heatherlogan at 7:31 AM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also Elizabeth Moon: Vatta's War series

If you try the first one and enjoy it, you might try her Heris Serrano / Esmay Suiza books. There are cheap collections. NB: A big chunk of one of the later books is about sexual slavery in a strongly misogynistic and patriarchal society.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:31 AM on December 2, 2017

I just finished the above-mentioned Revenger by Alastair Reynolds. I thought it was pretty good and fits your requirements to a T, though it's not my favorite of Reynolds' books, all of which are worth checking out.
posted by skycrashesdown at 8:07 AM on December 2, 2017

You might enjoy Poor Man's Fight and sequels. Seconding Elizabeth Moon, The Witches of Karres and Liaden.
posted by paduasoy at 8:24 AM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

There's also Tanya Huff's Valor books. If you want books literally set mostly on spaceships, rather than adventures of space-going characters who spend most of the book on a planet, you'd probably want to start with the second, The Better Part of Valor.
posted by paduasoy at 8:29 AM on December 2, 2017

The Daedalus Incident by Michael J. Martinez is partly set on a space station on Mars and partly set on an alternate universe where the characters are pretty much Hornblower in space. It's a lot of fun.
posted by mogget at 8:38 AM on December 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh, and David Drake's RCN series, the first of which is With the Lightnings. It is a bit more towards the cheesy end of things, I would say, so depends what you're looking for.
posted by paduasoy at 8:46 AM on December 2, 2017

Really, a lot of Ian M. Banks Culture books have awesome space ships / drones / orbital habitats / etc. Even a little thing that looks like a floating cigar has a brain the size of a planet folded into a mini-universe and could easily destroy a planet. And they all have funny names and are terribly chatty, one keeps people who want to sleep/die for a few hundred years because they're bored and uses their bodies to make dioramas of ancient battlefields for a lark.

I don't remember the specific books, but a few of Frank Herbert's works were very spaceship / space-opera centered.
posted by zengargoyle at 3:47 PM on December 2, 2017

The Wreck of the River of Stars by Michael Flynn is set on a spaceship that has seen better days, with a ragtag crew (who basically can't stand each other.) The title kind of gives it away, but it's a rather melancholy Greek tragedy set in outer space.
posted by Quietgal at 5:30 PM on December 2, 2017

Going to second the Expanse series (and the TV show if you watch TV). Ragtag group in space? Check (although there is the occasional space station/planet). You will cheer for the core ragtag group as well as the other people they accumulate around them over the course of the series. Every book in the series has been better than the last for me. I'm a fan of both the Miles Vorkosigan books and the Ancillary series and the Expanse books really worked for me.
posted by rednikki at 8:19 PM on December 2, 2017

C.J. Cherryh - Chanur series:
Set in Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe, but in a different region of space inhabited by numerous alien spacefaring civilizations, the Chanur novels are unusually realistic examples of space opera, with ship-to-ship shooting minimized in favor of coercion, manipulation, politics, pride contests, and clashing economic interests, driven in many cases by species-to-species miscommunication and misunderstanding.

this is the very definition of ragtag crew being understatedly badass in a keenly imagined universe. a nice take on gender politics too, with the protagonists being ragingly sexist female space cattes gradually coming to terms with their stupid, pampered, violent males maybe being not a complete waste of space all the time.
posted by Sebmojo at 9:53 PM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

The Ship Who Sang is about a woman who is a cyborg spaceship and her non-cyborg partners.
posted by Sophont at 11:55 PM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Much of the action in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought) and related books take place on space ships. I wish I had these books to read for the first time again.
posted by andreap at 11:36 AM on December 3, 2017 [1 favorite]