I’ve finished the “Old Man’s War” series from John Scalzi. It was great!
Can you recommend any other good sci-fi series playing in space for my next read?
The expanse
Their new series is really good too, but in a totally different way than the expanse. I highly recommend it!
This one, all day long!
I think it’ll take you at least two days to read all nine books.
Hahaha you sir underestimate my ability to read slow!
I actually do read slow and I’m ok with that
Children of Time/Ruin/Memory/Strife - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Trigger Warning: I have pretty serious arachnophobia and it took me several weeks of interruptions to be comfortable reading this series.
The Bobbiverse Series
[](We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-legion-we-are-bob)
The Children of Time series was pretty fun. Adrian Tschaikovsky, I think.
I haven’t disliked any of his books so far. His Elder Race book was such a good blend of sci-fi and fantasy even if it was a little cheesy. I’m really looking forward to part 2 later this year.
Peter F Hamilton: Nights Dawn Trilogy
Ian M Banks: Culture Series
+1 for The Culture. If op liked Old Man’s War they’ll love The Culture.
Not necessarily. I loved OMW but something about the Culture novels just rubbed me the wrong way. I read the first two books and gave up. They were okay, but I didn’t enjoy them enough to want to read any more.
I found that Banks’ writing can be… boring? There is a certain simplicity in it that can rub me the wrong way.
This should not be a reason NOT to read the books, as I found them to be simple reads with amazing concepts.
Consider Phlebas is a great read as it’s told from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with the Culture and is exposed to it at a distance.
Other books in the series put you front and centre in the Culture and it can be overwhelming.
Some of his books don’t even mention the culture, but you know it’s operating under a veil in front of the reader the entire time.
It’s all really quite genius.
I didn’t find Banks’ writing to be particularly boring. The plot in Consider Phlebas was interesting enough for me to finish the book, at least.
The Player of Games was a big letdown, though. Similarly to the first book, the plot was interesting enough. But by time I got to the end, I realized: I just wasn’t having fun. I didn’t particularly care about the protagonist, and I wasn’t impressed with the way he was characterized. Just, overall…meh. It doesn’t resonate for me.
I’ve read most of the series and I would say this is my experience with half of it.
Some books are bangers others are flops. But overall the entire thing is worth reading for the universe he presents.
Hmm, it has been a while since I read them. Maybe I should put the next one in the series on hold at the library.
So. To save you some time, none of them need to be read in order (although Consider Phlebas is the best starting point), the books I recommend are:
Use of Weapons, Excession, Look to Windward, Matter, Surface Detail
…. Wait. You know, I just looked at a list of the Culture novels and realized I HAVE read them all except Surface Detail(which I am currently reading and enjoy) and honestly Player of Games is the weakest of the lot followed by Hydrogen Sonata.
You really did stop reading right as it gets really good. Use of Weapons and Excession especially open up the world and really start pushing cool concepts.
Alan Dean Foster
The Damned Seies: https://www.goodreads.com/series/40571-the-damned
Peter F Hamilton
The Commonwealth series: https://www.goodreads.com/series/108563-commonwealth-universe Start with Pandoras Star and go from there.
I really enjoyed seveneves
edit: even if there are some … less than desirable characters in it.
It’s older, but Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama is one I’ve read several times.
There are a couple of sequel books that are kind of partially written by Clarke, but do expand the story and characters quite a bit.
I read them all years ago, but opted to skip the sequels on a recent re-read, but my wife actually prefers the sequels for the characters and story development.
No disrespect to your wife, but the Rama sequels are fucking terrible.
My secret shame is that I lowkey love the Rama sequels, though I fully acknowledge that they are political soap operas in space and tonally absolutely nothing like the original.
Dan Moren’s Galactic Cold War series might be a good fit. Like Scalzi, it’s very soft sci fi, with a somewhat military bent (spies, in this case) and well-written characters.
Also, if you liked Old Man’s War, I actually thought Scalzi’s Interdependency series was better so you might enjoy that.
Foundation and the broader universe by Isaac Asimov is a good one. Robots, foundations, and they empire series, as well as some stand alone stories all make one large story arc together.
If you like hard eco-political sci-fi, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series is one I still think about often, and I read it about 20 years ago now. Bonus: if you like it then he’s written a whole lot of other great stuff.
For the Old Man’s War flavor, I recently finished Neal Asher’s Agent Cormac series, which is a subset of his Polity series. The stories are stellar, excellent character development, and deliciously complex moral issues. I’d say it’s interstellar James Bond (Daniel Craig’s version) having a love child with The Culture, early Tom Clancy, and “Heart of Darkness.” My one caution is that Asher’s sentence structure sometimes almost feels like reading Thackeray.
I am now going back and reading the rest of the Polity novels in order. I am quite pleased. I kinda wish I started from the beginning, but it’s also been fun to have that “foresight” on events now that I’m in the earlier novels.
Oof, I’m partway through The Soldier, feeling like I’m missing some clues. I picked it up at the library having seen “book 1 of…” on the cover. I had no clue it was midway through a big, established setting!
Maybe I should return it and re-request after I read the earlier Polity novels…hmm…
In some of the books I’ve read so far, Asher does okay with backfilling some details if you skipped previous novels. But there is definitely a whole lot of backstory you might be missing on Orlandine, the Jain, the Prador, and the complexities of… everything. There are long-running plots within plots, and more than a couple conspiracies.
FWIW: this is the reading order I’m now using: https://www.readingorders.info/the-neal-ashers-polity-universe-reading-order/
Ha, I have some more books to request from the library!
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Hands down the best 5 part trilogy in Sci Fi
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The Final Architecture series by Adrian Tchaikovsky is epic!
Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series is equally good but much calmer, less action.
Other sci-fi series or books I’ve really enjoyed recently:
- Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Redshirts by John Scalzi
- The Expanse series. Although I only made it part way though book 5 when I started watching the show and stopped reading it.
Old Man’s war is on my list. What did you like about it?
I’ve never bothered trying to watch the Expanse show. I’ve read the series. Seeing the show would be cool, but knowing that the show is only half the story? Nah.
It’s the same part of me that feels tricked by Game of Thrones and Name of the Wind. Not a fan of unfinished stories.
It is surprisingly good, but indeed by the 4th season it is deviating heavily from the books in prep for wrapping up.
Tap for spoiler
They also basically dont mention the void entities at all since they werent able to go in depth with the late timeline stuff
I’ve read the series a few times and watched it as well.
The first season is sort of amazing and I really appreciated the adaptation. Honestly , the first several seasons were good. Definitely not as good as the books though.
The fourth season is not really worth it. Amazon bought it and pretty much just killed it.
Oh hell, I’m going to start reading them when I’m done with mine lol.
Oof, feels like such a sci-fi heartbreak show. It SOUNDS amazing, and if they could have done a faithful adaptation of the entire book series, I’d be all-in.
But…cancelling it before they even reach the halfway point of the story? Ugh.
