# Need space/sci-fi book recs after watching the movie Star Trek



## hudsonam (Jan 13, 2010)

Watched the movie Star Trek last night and loved it (even though I'm not a Trekkie  ) and took my son to the planetarium today, so I'm in the mood for some science fiction having to do with space travel. Any recommendations?


----------



## MariaESchneider (Aug 1, 2009)

Check out the Honor Harrington series by David Webber . Baen is the publisher so you can probably find the first one on their webscription site for free!

You can also get Simon Haynes first book free over at his site.  It's not in Kindle format, but you can convert it (I can't remember which format it came in, but Calibre would convert it most likely.)  His series is kind of spoofy, but fun.


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

A couple freebies from the Baen Free Library (in this order) which are good "space operas":

 

If you prefer something a bit more cutting-edge and perhaps cerebral:


----------



## Emily King (Jun 9, 2009)

I really enjoyed Cyberdrome (reminded me a lot of Michael Crichton in the "old days" with Andromeda Strain and Sphere):


----------



## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

Does your son want to read semi-realistic books about space travel? Or stick with fantasy space travel à la Star Trek? You may want to give him a taste of real science science fiction and let him decide for himself.

Two come to mind: both are excellent stories and show how science and space travel could possibly play out in the future.


----------



## hudsonam (Jan 13, 2010)

Geemont said:


> Does your son want to read semi-realistic books about space travel? Or stick with fantasy space travel à la Star Trek? You may want to give him a taste of real science science fiction and let him decide for himself.
> 
> Two come to mind: both are excellent stories and show how science and space travel could possibly play out in the future.


My son's in preschool, so he's not the one reading.  The books are for me. He just likes to look at the planets. LOL! Thanks for the recs! I'm more interested in the Star Trek sort of fantasy sci-fi.


----------



## Basilius (Feb 20, 2010)

hudsonam said:


> My son's in preschool, so he's not the one reading.  The books are for me. He just likes to look at the planets. LOL! Thanks for the recs! I'm more interested in the Star Trek sort of fantasy sci-fi.


Then you'll probably want to skip Red Mars. A fantastic book, but covers such realistic issues it should be required reading for NASA. I thought about recommending it myself, but I see it wouldn't be a good fit.

There's a HUGE number of Star Trek novels. I haven't looked to see how many are available for the Kindle, though.


----------



## arshield (Nov 17, 2008)

MariaESchneider said:


> Check out the Honor Harrington series by David Webber . Baen is the publisher so you can probably find the first one on their webscription site for free!


I like the Honor Harrington books. Baen releases cds with some of their hardbacks that have a ton of free books on them. They allow those books to be shared. So this is a link to most of the Honor Harrington books for free. http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/06B-SaganamiCD/SaganamiCD/

My first recommendation would be Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, but it is not available for Kindle (it is on audible though).


----------



## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

If you're interested in a book that starts out near time and follows development out into the solar system and then out into the galaxy, I suggest _Accelerando_ by Charles Stross.


----------



## BoomerSoonerOKU (Nov 22, 2009)

Stephen R Donaldson is a favorite author of mine for his Thomas Covenant fantasy series, but I really enjoyed his sci-fi "Gap" Series. Not sure how dark you want to go, and this series is dark, especially the first installment, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.


----------



## Chloista (Jun 27, 2009)

You could just read the Star Trek books on the market.  There are an awful lot of them.


----------



## Magenta (Jun 6, 2009)

Azimov's Foundation series.


----------



## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Chloista said:


> You could just read the Star Trek books on the market. There are an awful lot of them.


That's what I was going to suggest. A lot of them are available for pretty low prices. Actually, it was in order to get some out of paper print ST books that I bought my kindle.


----------



## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet series is good, too. Military sci-fi/space opera.











I also second the Honor Harrington series already recommended.


----------



## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

I definitely support the Honor Harrington books, and NogDog's two David Drake suggestions. Be advised they are both quite militaristic, and don't have the exploration and new civilizations stuff of Star Trek (I love 'em and they are good books, but they are oriented around space battles and politics, not aliens and exploration). As mentioned, at least some of these are available for free from Webscriptions.net.

I'm actually a bit flummoxed to think that there's not a whole lot of science fiction, particularly "great" science fiction, that covers the exploration and contacting-new-worlds theme of Star Trek. One of my favorites that does is this:










http://www.webscription.net/p-691-the-inheritors.aspx

This is part of a series about John Grimes, an officer in the "Federation Survey Service" of a human civilization covering a great deal of the galaxy. A common theme in these books (including this one) is contacting "lost colonies", descendants of people from colony ships in the early days of interstellar travel that went astray and have been out of touch with the mainstream of human civilization until our heroes find them.

Probably the best example of "Star Trekkian" exploration and contact is this one:










http://www.webscription.net/p-581-the-mote-in-gods-eye.aspx

This is a great book with a sequel. Wildly popular among science fiction fans (The Grimes books I mentioned earlier are more of a "cult classic" thing and not as well-known). First contact with a fascinating alien civilization that really is DIFFERENT, not just humans with bug eyes and antennae. To abandon modesty, I'd suggest if you were only gonna buy one book out of all those mentioned in this thread, this should be the one if Star Trek is inspiring you. I'm serious about that!


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

I would agree that _Mote_ is one of the quintessential "first contact" novels, and would be an excellent choice accessible to most readers interested in the subject. But I still like _Excession_ better, though it's quite a bit further from the style and spirit of the Star Trek franchise.


----------



## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

NogDog said:


> But I still like _Excession_ better, though it's quite a bit further from the style and spirit of the Star Trek franchise.


I haven't read Excession, and right now the Kindle version is showing as "not available to readers in the United States", so I am not going to be able to have an opinion for the foreseeable future!


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

The Hooded Claw said:


> I haven't read Excession, and right now the Kindle version is showing as "not available to readers in the United States", so I am not going to be able to have an opinion for the foreseeable future!


Huh...I wonder if that was the case when I posted earlier, or if it just changed? I have the paperback, so I might have missed that when I posted before, as I was just pleased to see a Kindle edition listed for it. Oh well...the trials and tribulations with book publishers and e-books continues, I guess.


----------



## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

The Hooded Claw said:


> This is part of a series about John Grimes, an officer in the "Federation Survey Service" of a human civilization covering a great deal of the galaxy. A common theme in these books (including this one) is contacting "lost colonies", descendants of people from colony ships in the early days of interstellar travel that went astray and have been out of touch with the mainstream of human civilization until our heroes find them.


I bought...but have not yet read...the first 'set' of books in this series off Baen recently because they looked interesting. I'm relatively new to the space opera and militaristic-type sci-fi books but have quite enjoyed what I've read so far (like Honor and Lost Fleet). Good to see a recommendation for Grimes here too. 

I've got sample of a couple of the different Star Trek series on KC but haven't yet started reading...I cringe at the outlay of cash if I were to get into *all* of them. Same reason I've never got into the Star Wars book world, pre- or post-Kindle.


----------



## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

Steph H said:


> I bought...but have not yet read...the first 'set' of books in this series off Baen recently because they looked interesting. I'm relatively new to the space opera and militaristic-type sci-fi books but have quite enjoyed what I've read so far (like Honor and Lost Fleet). Good to see a recommendation for Grimes here too.


Steph, you are clearly a high-class person with excellent taste!


----------



## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Why, thank you, kind sir!


----------



## hudsonam (Jan 13, 2010)

Thanks all! I sent a bunch of samples to my Kindle, so as soon as I finish with my current book, I'm going to get started on some of these.


----------



## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

If you do happen to want to try out Star Trek novels, two of my faves are _The Wounded Sky_ and _Spock's World_, both by Diane Duane, and both available on Kindle.


----------



## WilliamM (Feb 10, 2009)

Basilius said:


> Then you'll probably want to skip Red Mars. A fantastic book, but covers such realistic issues it should be required reading for NASA. I thought about recommending it myself, but I see it wouldn't be a good fit.
> 
> There's a HUGE number of Star Trek novels. I haven't looked to see how many are available for the Kindle, though.


beides its yet another series that is not fully available on kindle ..Red Mars and Blue Mars are avaiable but the middle book of the trilogy Green Mars is not..this is the type of stuff that I really hate about owning a Kindle


----------



## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

Fuzzy Dunlop said:


> beides its yet another series that is not fully available on kindle ..Red Mars and Blue Mars are avaiable but the middle book of the trilogy Green Mars is not..this is the type of stuff that I really hate about owning a Kindle


hmmm ... I looked and you're correct. I got the entire series as a set of Red/Green and Blue/Martians combo books. it is odd when books that were available are no longer available as ebooks. I'd contact the publisher, Spectra, and enquire.


----------



## Basilius (Feb 20, 2010)

Geoffrey said:


> hmmm ... I looked and you're correct. I got the entire series as a set of Red/Green and Blue/Martians combo books. it is odd when books that were available are no longer available as ebooks. I'd contact the publisher, Spectra, and enquire.


It's days like this I love Twitter:

Me: Hey @bantamspectra - Why is Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson no longer available for #kindle, but the other two books in the series are?
Spectra: @elandes That is an excellent question. I shall look into this for you.

Now, how effective this ACTUALLY is remains to be seen. But at least somebody allegedly connected with Spectra has been notified and has responded.

UPDATE: just moments after I posted this, I got this tweet from Spectra: @elandes Apparently there were some issues with the coding or something regarding GREEN MARS, but I hope to know when it's coming back soon

Can anyone who's got the prior Kindle edition attest to this?


----------



## imon32red (Jun 15, 2009)

I am not a trekkie either.  I have never seen a complete episode of Star Trek on TV.  However, Star Trek the movie was amazing.  I haven't seen it for a couple of weeks and I think that I will watch it  again tonight.


----------



## WilliamM (Feb 10, 2009)

nice! thanks for taking the time to check into this!



Basilius said:


> It's days like this I love Twitter:
> 
> Me: Hey @bantamspectra - Why is Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson no longer available for #kindle, but the other two books in the series are?
> Spectra: @elandes That is an excellent question. I shall look into this for you.
> ...


----------



## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

Basilius said:


> UPDATE: just moments after I posted this, I got this tweet from Spectra: @elandes Apparently there were some issues with the coding or something regarding GREEN MARS, but I hope to know when it's coming back soon
> 
> Can anyone who's got the prior Kindle edition attest to this?


I have the Red Mars/Green Mars combo book and there are no noticeable problems in that version. Hopefully someone else can attest to the stand alone.


----------



## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

imon32red said:


> I am not a trekkie either. I have never seen a complete episode of Star Trek on TV. However, Star Trek the movie was amazing. I haven't seen it for a couple of weeks and I think that I will watch it again tonight.


Its good to see new initiates enter into fold. Live Long and Prosper.


----------



## David Derrico (Nov 18, 2009)

I am also a big fan of Star Trek (well, the original series, the next generation, and the movies, although I didn't care for the new movie). I think it's fair to say that all the Star Trek I watched influenced my own novels (as reviewers have pointed out). Without repeating it all here, I'd maybe point you to the suggestions in the "Beginner's Science Fiction" thread.

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,20823.msg402765.html#msg402765


----------



## ErinLindsey (Jan 18, 2009)

If you liked Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, they have some novels that have been Kindleized. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=stargate

For Star Trek books I have a few favorites...they're from the original series, not the rewrite...

_The Vulcan Academy Murders_ was good... 
http://www.amazon.com/The-Vulcan-Academy-Murders-ebook/dp/B000FC0WE2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1268928598&sr=1-1

_The IDIC Epidemic_ is another one... 
http://www.amazon.com/The-IDIC-Epidemic-ebook/dp/B000FC0Q20/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2 I read this years ago, and still have my original copy of it.

_Ishmael_ was probably one of my favorites. 
http://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-ebook/dp/B000FC0QCU/ref=pd_sim_kinc_6?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2
Probably because it was a crossover with the tv show _Here Comes The Brides_. It's probably the only Star Trek novel I've ever read that crossed over with a western tv show. (Mark Lenard, who was Sarek on Star Trek, was a regular on the show, and Robert Brown, Lazarus-A and Lazarus-B in _The Alternative Factor_ was a starring cast member) Crossovers like that are usually something that is only done in fan fiction. I read this book years ago as a DTB and when I got my first Kindle it was one of the first Star Trek novels I bought for it...it was fun to re-read on my Kindle 1.


----------

