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.

56 points

Ohhhhh boy, I get to nerd out. OK, super short story; reading and chatting about The Expanse book series got me pointed towards the work of Alastair Reynolds. The early parts of his universes arch aren’t really relevant for your purposes, but in the latter books, how humanity survives on lifeless rocks, is exactly what you’re looking for. Plus, he’s a astrophysicist doctor, iirc, and it is quite quite good hard Sci Fi.

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10 points

I finished Alastair Reynold’s Pushing Ice a few months ago and it’s kind of close to what OP is looking for. Also a really good book!

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7 points

I love Alastair Reynolds

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32 points
*

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson is this.

Also Tau Zero by Poul Anderson, to a degree.

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8 points

Came here to say Seveneves as well. Just borrowed it again from the library today actually! Highly recommend.

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7 points

Just chiming in to say Seveneves is a great read.

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3 points
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I was going to suggest Tau Zero. It might not be exactly what he’s chasing but there’s are some similar points. Plus it’s really good and fairly short.

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1 point

It certainly ticks off the hard science point, but is more about how the crew deal with everything philosophically. Nothing like the Martian I guess.

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29 points

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.

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9 points

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.

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3 points

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

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2 points

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

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29 points
*

Just a loose round up so far

Seveneves Neal Stephenson
Tau Zero Poul Anderson
Metro 2033 Dmitry Glukhovsky
The Children of Time Adrian Tchaikovsky
Lucifer’s Hammer Larry Niven
Pushing Ice Alastair Reynolds
Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
Diaspora by Greg Egan
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martin
The 100 Kass Morgan
Interdependency trilogy by John Scalzi.
Silo series of books by Hugh Howey

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5 points

Seveneves is incredible, with the caveat that the last chapter of the book was almost handwavey with regards to the author’s conclusion of where humanity ended up. 10/10 otherwise.

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1 point

What’s the rest of his works like? I’ve read snow crash and loved it, will give seveneves a go.

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3 points

Highly recommend Anathem and Diamond Age. Cryptonomicon and Baroque Cycle are more tours-de-force but if you are nerdy enough (I mean c’mon this applies to all his work) and very into history, I can recommend those too.

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1 point

If you liked Snow Crash, give Diamond Age a try.

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1 point

The only other one I’ve attempted to read by Niel Stephenson has been Cryptonomicon. It seemed to get way, way into the weeds and is over a thousand pages. It was in my 20’s that I attempted it and I only made it half way through.

His work is top tier and highly regarded by many as thoroughly researched.

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1 point

That last part felt like an entirely different book. I didn’t even finish it. I just pretend the story ended before that.

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2 points
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Thumbs up for the Silo series. Even though it’s not in outer space, many other boxes tick: multi-generation, environmental systems, spoiled planet …

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1 point

Going to have to check this one out!

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1 point

I’ve loved half of that list and now have to read the other half

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26 points

The Expanse series is kinda like that. There are other planets, but most of the action takes place on ships, stations, and asteroids that have been converted into stations. It goes into depth about life in space, and everything from engineering to biology, sociology, politics, and theology.

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3 points
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The topic is straight brought up several times, including most notably in book 2 about the Jupiter moons, but they all claim it’s borderline impossible because all this is super delicate system only made possible by Earth anyway. Which is later proven true in last book.

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