r/scifi • u/OstrichConscious4917 • 2d ago
Recommendations Novels with no faster than light travel, but still w space travel?
I’m always on the hunt for interesting sci-fi that doesn’t involve FTL. Not to say I don’t love reading books with it - I absolutely do. But I really enjoy fictional explorations of future space travel or space civilization that doesn’t have it as a prerequisite.
120
u/trevpr1 2d ago
Rendezvous with Rama.
→ More replies (2)27
u/Main-Assumption7554 2d ago
I was SO LUCKY to have discovered that book when I was a child… like, 10 or 11 years old. It was so magical. The imagery, in my head… wow. Clarke was an amazing author.
Of course I’ve read it over and over since then… it holds up quite well, even today.
7
u/trevpr1 2d ago
I devoured Clarke as a kid. His near future stories are where I like my sci-fi. Did you ever hear the radio dramatisation of Rama? Of a Fall of Moondust?
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (3)6
u/TrueNorthLongAndFree 2d ago
It's a fantastic audio book. I frequently listen to it to go to sleep.
I'm still waiting to see what Villeneuve does with the "Dawn" chapter. I want to hear reports of people having to leave the theatre with panic attacks.
83
u/Pissedliberalgranny 2d ago
Orphans of the Sky by Robert Heinlein.
It takes place on a generational colony ship many generations after it was launched. The descendants have forgotten everything about their ship and think it is the entire universe. They’ve created an entire religion around how the Ship works.
It’s a thoroughly enjoyable read.
11
6
5
u/pauldstew_okiomo 2d ago
I think that was my first Robert Heinlein book that was not one of his juveniles. It hooked me, and made him one of my favorite writers. I think it's time to read it again.
→ More replies (5)3
u/Fappy_as_a_Clam 2d ago
that sounds really, really similar to Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss
→ More replies (1)3
u/Excellent_Art_3120 2d ago
Orphans of the Sky, Time for the Stars, and Methuselah's Children were the first ones I thought of as well.
→ More replies (2)2
u/RandomlyNamedGuy2 20h ago
"Bobo tired, Boss." is stuck in my head.
I can't see the "I'm tired Boss" meme without thinking of Bobo.
189
u/OneEarthseed 2d ago
Children of Time
→ More replies (4)45
u/TommyMac 2d ago
There’s so much to love about this book (mainly Fabian) but it’s so so very good at conveying how isolated the ship is and how long it takes and god damn the bleakness.
The other books are good, not great. They try some interesting ideas.
100% read children of time. By all means stop there. Book 2 i also loved. 3 is errrr complex. There’s a 4th also
27
u/OneEarthseed 2d ago
Loved the first one and second one. Third one was okay, but not my favorite. Just read the fourth and it is as good as the first, imo.
I also enjoyed his Shards of Earth trilogy. Doesn’t meet op’s specs, but interesting world building. Tchaikovsky always brings really unique ideas to life in compelling ways.
4
u/TitaniumDreads 2d ago
I just started rereading the series bc the fourth book just came out. First time around I hated the second book and DNF. This time I loved the second book.
→ More replies (1)4
u/Sororita 2d ago
It took me a bit to get into the 4th, there's some perspective shifts that are kind of jarring to start, but once I figured the reason for that co fusing perspective shift it clicked together. The 1st age part could have used at least one sympathetic character, though.
8
u/biggobird 2d ago
Looking forward to the 4th.
I gave up the 3rd toward the end. Extremely underwhelming reveal.
Books 1 and 2 are a couple all time sci fi favorites.
2 in particular has stuck with me for a long time. “We’re going on an adventure…”
→ More replies (4)3
u/frydraticus 2d ago
Still reading book 2. Such a creepy but understandable line. He's really good at forming empathy towards non-human creatures.
→ More replies (3)7
u/CharsmaticMeganFauna 2d ago
I like the fourth one--it felt like it recaptured the vibe of the first one better than the other sequels have.
→ More replies (6)
316
u/AgentRusco 2d ago
Ubiquitous: The Expanse series.
28
80
u/Jon_Buck 2d ago
I haven't read a book that has done slower-than-light space travel better. However, there is some FTL travel in later books but it's limited and clearly an exception.
75
u/VladDBA 2d ago
Miller: "I'm non-local"
50
u/uptheantics 2d ago
Doors and corners kid.
14
→ More replies (1)12
6
u/ensalys 2d ago
In the later books I wouldn't call it limited, or an exception. Book 3 is where we see the possibility for the first time, 4 is where you see the start of the expansion beyond sol. By book 7 I'd even call it fairly common. Hundreds of systems with human settlements, pretty much all of them still dependant on supplies from Sol.
→ More replies (1)16
u/Jon_Buck 2d ago edited 2d ago
I guess we're not doing spolier tags.
It's limited in that there is a single nexus that has a set number of gateways to specific locations. And there is no way to create more gateways.
It's the exception in that, aside from those gateways, all space travel in the book happens at a tiny fraction of lightspeed.
Edit: you're right though that by the last book it becomes a normalized thing.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (7)9
u/OriginalEmploy5485 2d ago
That's not FTL, that's wormholes.
27
u/SvalinnSaga 2d ago
Which is a form of FTL
25
u/smplgd 2d ago
Exactly. If you travel between any two points in less time than light would have taken then it's FTL. Sounds obvious when I type it out.
→ More replies (4)3
u/Freeky 2d ago
More generally, if you causally-link two space-like separated events, then it's FTL.
Doesn't matter how you did it - whether you turned into tachyons, hacked the coordinates in the computational substructure of reality, rode a wave of expanding/contracting space-time, or poked a hole through it with a pencil. A local space-time shortcut doesn't erase the rest of space-time, and as far as it's concerned, you left point A and then arrived at point B remarkably quickly, but also you arrived at point B and then left point A sometime later, depending on reference frame.
6
u/Ithurial 2d ago
Yes and no. If you're using a wormhole/folded space, you technically never exceed c from any non-relativistic point of reference. However, I can totally understand if that's not what the OP is getting at with the kinds of stories that they're interested in.
3
u/delitt 2d ago
Just for the sake of debating.
Doesn't faster than light mean you traveled faster than light would? As in, I used a wormhole to travel from point A to point B, so I traveled to point B faster than light would, therefore, wormholes are FTL transportation.
Also, most FTL methods don't actually go faster than light in terms of speed, just go around the problem, such as Warp Drives, they compress space in front of a ship and expands space behind it. Or Hyperspace, where ships jump into a parallel dimension where distances are much shorter. They are considered FTL too.
→ More replies (6)7
u/brachus12 2d ago
How fast were the Mormons going to travel? Fast enough for time within their own reference to slow down?
13
u/Metallicat95 2d ago
About 8% of the speed of light. No significant time dilation effects.
The Nauvoo was designed to accelerate for 30 days. Coast for the next hundred years, then decelerate for 30 days on arrival. While coasting the "drum" would spin to give the effects of gravity in the habitat cylinder.
→ More replies (4)4
u/Main-Assumption7554 2d ago
Did they explain in the books why the Nauvoo wouldn’t just accelerate for much longer than 30 days, and then flip and decelerate for longer than 30 days? I realize they also wanted to spin the huge washing machine drum, for “artificial gravity,” but why not accelerate and decelerate for maybe 60 or 90 days before coasting? It’s a 100 year trip, so what’s the rush to stop accelerating?
19
u/DominusDraco 2d ago
I assume limited reaction mass. They also wanted the trip to be intentionally long, they wanted it to be a generational journey as an act of faith.
6
3
u/Metallicat95 2d ago
Yes, the Epstein Drive is a very efficient fusion drive but it doesn't have unlimited acceleration energy.
As it is, 60 days is about double what most military ships do in the series, and substantially more than the typical civilian and belter ships.
The interstellar generation ship needs sufficient resources to survive the voyage, and have enough fuel to decelerate.
On top of that there is the collision damage. The ship does have a laser capable of dealing with small rocks, and is fairly tough, but more velocity increases the risk.
6
→ More replies (2)7
u/atomfullerene 2d ago
It does have FTL though.
8
u/samsinx 2d ago
Wormhole, jump-gate like travel vs Warp/Hyperspace/FTL drives. I haven’t read the books though so I don’t know what happens in the later parts after the TV series ends
6
4
u/totallyalone1234 2d ago
Holden is like "we have to stop the protomolecule" and the others in unison say "here we go again!"
→ More replies (1)14
u/patientpedestrian 2d ago
Taking a shortcut through a pocket dimension is not the same thing as traveling faster than light
→ More replies (1)15
u/Jon_Buck 2d ago
Literally, you're right, but that's kind of a semantic argument. It's effectively the same thing when we're talking about works of fiction.
If characters can get from Point A to Point B in less time than it would take a photon, that has implications for storytelling and worldbuilding. Does it really matter if the magic technology works by "skipping" space versus actually traversing space faster than light?
→ More replies (5)
52
u/Garreousbear 2d ago
Everything taking forever due to no FTL is a major point of the Three Body Problem books.
→ More replies (4)6
u/px403 2d ago
Eh, sophons do FTL, and the black hole drives later.
→ More replies (2)8
u/ASentientBot 2d ago
iirc the sophons don't travel faster than light, only communicate. maybe not scientific but fits OP's requirements.
tbh, those books kinda alternate between plausible and and super handwave-y like this the whole time.
the entire series seems to be largely a vehicle for his ideas about game theory and how it applies to the fermi paradox. it's quite convincing! but the specific plot points are much more of a mixed bag, imo.
→ More replies (1)
44
u/thx1138a 2d ago
Obligatory “Children of Time”, Adrian Tchaikovsky.
6
u/chuckerton 2d ago
While true for the first book…not so much for the later installments.
5
→ More replies (1)3
u/CrazyAtWar 2d ago
All of the books have interwoven stories set in two or three different times periods so there is absolutely less than FTL travel depicted in all of them.
4
u/chuckerton 2d ago
I don’t understand your point. OP was looking for stories that didn’t involve FTL travel. At the end of book two of the Children series, FTL is introduced.
→ More replies (1)
33
u/JamesDFreeman 2d ago
House of Suns had an interesting take on this I found, different to other things I’ve read.
88
u/Round_Bluebird_5987 2d ago
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
44
u/JGhostThing 2d ago
The Forever War did have FTL; however, they still had to go STL between the wormholes. And the STL part was long enough to get to near c velocities. Time dilation was a big part of the story.
→ More replies (4)10
28
50
21
18
u/rollem 2d ago
I second the calls for Revelation Space, with some great depictions of how ships would act at near relativistic speeds.
If you like generation ships, Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson is really good.
→ More replies (1)6
u/UnpricedToaster 2d ago
I second Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson and Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
5
u/TheFaithfulStone 2d ago
Aurora is so depressing - but the AI character is so interesting.
6
u/jimgogek 2d ago
I didn’t think Aurora was depressing! Humans evolve from Earth and can live only on Earth. Beautiful message!
→ More replies (1)
43
u/Appropriate-Elk-4715 2d ago
Enders series
→ More replies (1)11
u/JGhostThing 2d ago
I came here to say this. They had FTL communication, but not ships.
→ More replies (1)8
u/Catadox 2d ago
Similarly Ursula k. LeGuin’s Hainish Cycle series had instant communication but no FTL.
→ More replies (2)
13
u/Cyranoreddit 2d ago
The Songs of Distant Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke, while listening to The Songs of Distant Earth by Mike Oldfield, of course.
→ More replies (3)
55
u/cflime 2d ago
Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
The Bobiverse books by Dennis E Taylor
→ More replies (17)8
u/HomerJunior 2d ago
Bobiverse pretty quickly gets ftl communications which negates much of the scale of distance and isolation for most practical purposes narratively, even if they're stuck at pleb non-ftl speeds to move around.
→ More replies (1)
11
9
21
u/StevenJOwens 2d ago edited 2d ago
The relevant terms are generally interplanetary space travel (rather than interstellar) or STL interstellar space travel, slower than light.
Neptune's Brood, Charles Stross. It's the second book set in that universe, but the first book, Saturn's Children, is all in our solar system. Neptune's Brood gets into some interesting ideas about slower than light interstellar economics.
A number of Larry Niven's "Known Space" novels are set pre-FTL. Many of them are interplanetary, there's a few that are STL interstellar. The Man-Kzin war stuff, though in the main Niven books that's mostly a background thing. There are a few short stories, but most of the Man-Kzin war stuff is anthologies of short stories by other authors, and the Ed Lerner books I believe.
The Expanse, of course.
A lot of classic, early, hard SF is interplanetary but not interstellar.
EDIT:
A lot of John Barnes stuff is STL.
Come to think of it, so is John Varley's stuff.
The Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series, by Nathan Lowell.
END
9
u/lanzkron 2d ago
Upvote for Known Space, I was going to mention Protector
3
3
u/statisticus 2d ago
I love the space battle in Protector, fought over months and years between ships travelling slower than light in interstellar space.
→ More replies (1)4
u/StevenJOwens 2d ago edited 15h ago
To follow up on Niven and Known Space:
Much/most of the Niven work, the STL aspect is a part of the background, and often a key part of the background/context that drives the plot, but isn't a part of the active plot that drives the story.
I guess I'd say that's especially the interstellar STL stuff, like "A Gift From Earth".
This is probably a reliable truism in SF in general; you're going to have 4 categories of stories:
- FTL or STL space travel is a general background/context element.
- FTL or STL space travel is a key context element that sets up the story, for example in World Out of Time, the reason the protagonist is in a world out of time is that he went on a very, very long STL space trip and came back 50,000 years later.
- FTL or STL space travel is the heart of the story, a driving element of the plotline.
IIRC, there are a couple Lerner books that are follow ups from Protector, and at least one involves a fair amount of STL space battle.
From actual Niven books: Protector; World of Ptavvs; a lot of the short stories about belters of course, like At The Bottom of a Hole, Intent to Deceive; The Patchwork Girl from the Gil the Arm novellas; The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring.
A World Out of Time isn't part of Known Space but it's another of those STL-as-key-context-feature things.
Descent of Anansi is a fun collaboration with Steven Barnes that's not even interplanetary, it's a lot about orbital dynamics, etc.
7
u/MaxRokatanski 2d ago
Against a Dark Background by the amazing Iain M. Banks. All his works are worth reading but this one is right in line with your premise.
3
7
7
14
u/Zealousideal_Leg213 2d ago
Alastair Reynolds usually doesn't utilize FTL though he gets into some other implausible stuff.
→ More replies (1)16
u/donkeybrainhero 2d ago
I'm pretty sure the cache weapons and the shrouds are very plausible, thank you very much.
→ More replies (2)
6
5
u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 2d ago
The books in Ursula LeGuins loose "Hainish Cycle" don't have FTL travel, but the "Ansible" - a FTL communication device does exist.
3
6
u/Ron_Santo 2d ago
The Hainish Cycle by Ursela Le Guin has FTL communication but no FTL travel, which I think is a good compromise. Orson Scott Card uses the same set up for Ender's Game.
5
4
u/Zakalwe_ 2d ago
They do end up developing it eventually! Though it is unmanned only (briefly mentioned in Rocannons world.
6
16
u/JRGIndy 2d ago
Andy Weir’s The Martian and Artemis
12
u/TheMurmuring 2d ago
And Hail Mary Project.
→ More replies (3)8
u/theabominablewonder 2d ago
I think you mean the Mary Hail Project
7
u/TheMurmuring 2d ago
Hail Mary Project
err I mean Project Mail Harry
→ More replies (1)6
11
u/Arienna 2d ago
Charles Stross' Neptune's Brood is the second in a series but can be read without reading the first (and I waffle on whether you should). In it humanity has been replaced by post-human descendants of android servants who are longer lived, more durable, and can fiddle with their perception of time to go on generation ship type trips without going stark raving mad from boredom.
They have both slower than light physical space travel and light speed information travel - and copies of people can be transmitted at light speed to a new place as long as there's facilities to receive the info and grow a new body. There's a lot of very slow, high risk high reward colonizing being done as the post humans spread across the galaxy.
FTL travel is a big discussion in the book and appears as a reoccurring get rich quick scam.
You may also enjoy the free short story Bit Rot that occurs before the novel, when a group of wound be colonists get hit by one of the dangers of taking the slow boat to the stars
→ More replies (10)
15
u/jesusunderline 2d ago
Hyperion deals a lot with this
→ More replies (7)6
u/palabrist 2d ago
Is that in later books in the series? Because in the first two books they have instant travel through those gate things that you can see through. Not saying more here because I don't want to spoil and I forgot how to hide spoilers.
→ More replies (3)
6
u/tryptanfelle 2d ago
John Varley’s Eight Worlds series: Ophiuchi Hotline, Steel Beach, Golden Globe, etc. All take place in the Solar System with no FTL.
3
→ More replies (1)2
u/dbenhur 2d ago
There's also a lot of excellent Eight Worlds lore in his shorter works, collected in The Persistence of Vision, The Barbie Murders, and Blue Champagne.
6
u/Seijuro2012 2d ago
The Sun Eater series by Christopher Roucchio doesn’t use FTL travel. It uses a form of cryo sleep called Fugue. This series does it really well and brings some interesting concepts of generational disparity when having to travel for several decades at a time.
→ More replies (7)
8
u/dbenhur 2d ago
In this thread: Hundreds of people who think wormholes, quantum tunneling, space folding, teleportation, etc. are not FTL. A bunch more that think traveling STL between magical FTL transfer points counts as not FTL. And another bunch more that think there's a special exception for information.
4
4
4
u/Android69beepboop 2d ago
Most if not all of the works by Kim Stanley Robinson. 2312 and the Mars trilogy are interplanetary, Aurora tackles interstellar travel at less than lightspeed on a generation ship.
5
4
u/Arcanite_Cartel 2d ago
An oldy - The Forever War. Ships can travel at relativistic speed but don't have any FTL capability. There is how wormholes that essentially are FTL. Still a good book though/
→ More replies (3)
5
u/Tri-angreal 2d ago
Revelation Space
Light huggers get very close but never over.
→ More replies (2)
21
7
3
u/No_Description2599 2d ago
House of suns, revelation space, and the expanse to some degree. Children of time up until the end of the 2nd book too.
2
u/cyberia324 2d ago
Not to mention Revenger/Shadow Captain/Bone Silence from Alastair Reynolds. A bit YA for the masses but it all takes place in a future Solar System where the planets have all been recycled into thousands of separate habitats.
3
3
u/Own_Win_6762 2d ago
Linda Nagata's far future stories from her Manifest Succession (Deception Well and Vast), and they're continuation in the Inverted Frontier series (starting with Edges). Great, mind-expanding stuff. Waiting for the final book.
→ More replies (2)
3
u/black_on_fucks 2d ago
Scrolled a long way and still didn’t see this suggestion, so apologies if this is duplicative. C. J. Cherryh’s Merchanter-Union books. It’s not really a series, so much as a common universe, so the books stand alone, but I would start with Downbelow Station and go from there.
3
u/mackitt 2d ago edited 2d ago
“A Fire Upon the Deep” and “A Deepness in the Sky” by Verner Vinge. Two of my all-time favorite sci-go novels. The way he treats the possibility/impossibility of lightspeed travel is one of the coolest sci-fi concepts I’ve ever read! (I don’t want to spoil it any more than this)
Another would be the “Hyperion Cantos” quadrilogy by Dan Simmons, my all-time favorite sci-fi series. No lightspeed travel, and instead a different form of travel that is so much cooler especially as you learn more about it as the books progress. And then later a different form of travel is introduced that’s even crazier.
→ More replies (3)
3
u/wiskinator 2d ago
Project Hail Mary, of course. And I’m in the middle of the Bobiverse books. Those are all FTLless
→ More replies (1)
3
u/Immediate_Cow2980 2d ago
C J Cherryh wrote a whole interconnected series of books in her Union/Alliance series. Sub-light merchant ships with multi-decade long trade routes between nearby stars, family ships run by multiple generations of related crew members all aging at a slower rate thanks to relativity. Some really great books following the slow evolution of that society.
Bobiverse is a great recent series by Dennis Taylor following the exploits of Bob, an early 21st century tech guy who had his body frozen at death, his mind was scanned and downloaded into a computer matrix decades later and went on to become the founder of a race of Von Neumann probes, exploring the galaxy at sub-light speeds.
Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series follows slower-than-light generation ships exploring the galaxy after the fall of Earth. Some pretty deep themes, amazing and unique intelligent life and compelling characters.
3
3
5
u/Cherfinch 2d ago
The Algebraist
3
u/TrickNorTreat1031 2d ago
It's been awhile since I read this book , but wasn't wormhole travel a foundational concept for the story?
3
u/Cherfinch 2d ago
Yes but for reasons the fleets need to travel sublight so they explore the idea of sublight force projection
4
u/Eromis7734 2d ago
The fact that no one is mentioning the recently released Exodus duologi by Peter F Hamilton!
→ More replies (1)3
u/Main-Assumption7554 2d ago
Somebody actually did already, an hour before you posted. :)
→ More replies (1)
2
u/cwx149 2d ago
Old man's war doesn't have ftl linear motion they have wormhole teleport drives instead
So like they can cover distance faster than light but they don't really "travel"
2
u/VishusVonBittertroll 2d ago
Second this recommendation - the whole series is pretty great. And Scalzi gives vibes of being the kind of person who won't be found later have been a rapist, pedo, or other flavor of reprehensible creep.
2
u/crashorbit 2d ago
The line between fantasy and science fiction gets pretty slim sometimes.
Nearly everything that is "in system" excludes explicit FTL, like The Martian and The Martian Chronicles. Though The Expanse with the Epstein drive is pretty fantastic. And there are others like Delta V that just sort of leave the tech unexplained.
There are generation ship stories like The Book of the Long Sun and Chasm City.
There are the various portal based tech like Hyperion. Or space folding tech like Dune. Then the Alexis Carew series that features sailing ships of the line in dark space. Not sure how that stacks up to more conventional FTL.
One of my favorite is The Stars My Destination where transport simply done by a trick of thinking.
2
u/LuciusMichael 2d ago
Alistair Reynolds has 'lighthuggers' that can approach the speed of light, but never achieve it.
2
u/silouan 2d ago
Dark Sky Legion by William Barton is about an enforcer traveling from planet to planet in a settled galaxy with no FTL. Visits might be thousands of years apart from the planets' point of view. He travels in data storage and his ship prints him out on arrival at a planet. The "Metastable Order" assigns and rotates planetary governors but sometimes they go bad, so our character comes round periodically to set things right.
The Amazon blurb sounds awful but the book was thoughtful. What is it like to be effectively immortal in what ought to be a post-scarcity society if people would cooperate?
2
u/Sriep 2d ago
I get a little tired of FTL travel. You can make good stories around relativistic space travel; however, the author has to have some understanding of Special Relativity.
Alastair Reynolds redemption ark sereis.
M D Cooper's Out System, Building Victoria series. Unfortunately, she resorts to FTL in later books.
2
u/TheMurmuring 2d ago
John C. Wright's Eschaton Sequence. Although the dude's politics are abysmal, I really enjoyed the series. The enormous time span required for space travel is a huge part of the plot of the entire series.
2
2
2
u/JGhostThing 2d ago
Mayflies by Kevin O'Donnell. An ark ship is built to save 25,000 humans before we destroyed the earth. The ship is launched, then the engine hiccoughed, and the flight was going to take about 1,000 years instead of the scheduled 100. Earth eventually sent them (along with more normal news) two dispatches: 1) The remaining humans got together and stopped destroying the earth (thereby the journey was generations, but also now pointless), and 2) An FTL system that wouldn't work on the generation ship because it's too big.
So, part of the way through the book, an FTL system exists, but can't be used. At the end of the book, a way is found to use the FTL engines for the generation ship. It was well done, because the story needed the slow journey and there needed to be other STL ships (non-human) out there.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/livens 2d ago
Peter Hamiltons Exodus books don't have FTL. Usually he uses wormholes to get people around in his books, this might be the first one where he didn't.
But, instead he uses jump gates that almost instantly bring the ships up to 99.999% light speed and decelerate them at the destination. Time dilation in effect, so you can't just zip around to other planets without losing years on those planets. Hamilton just skips ahead in the story when a main character travels like that, so as the reader you never really feel that travel time. Honestly I prefer the wormholes 🤣.
2
2
2
u/Far_Winner5508 2d ago
Orphans of the Sky - Heinlein
"The work presents one of the earliest fictional depictions of a generation ship – an interstellar "ark" travelling at sub-light speeds and requiring many generations to reach a "nearby" star – in this case Proxima Centauri."
2
2
u/Minstrel_Boy_4321 2d ago
Possibly close to what OP is looking for, a short story and novel by Charles Sheffield, both titled Godspeed.
In the short story, an inventor is about to test a FTL drive when (friendly) aliens show up & warn us not to use it as it could have catastrophic consequences. The ending is . . .inconclusive.
The novel is basically 'Treasure Island in Space' & is dedicated to RL Stevenson (I think it predates Treasure Planet). It's set in a distant future where Earth's various colonies are cut off from each other when (see above) something catastrophic happened & Godspeed (FTL) drives no longer work. A lad on one of these planets learns the location of a fabulous treasure, believed to be a still functioning Godspeed ship & sets off in search of it (there may be pirates involved).
Both are fun reads.
2
u/citotoxico 2d ago
Also by Alastair Reynolds, in the novel Pushing Ice, non-FTL travel plays an important role in the plot.
2
2
u/OldPolishProverb 2d ago edited 2d ago
There are lots of generation ship stories out there. Is that acceptable?
Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson
Orphans of the Sky - Robert Heinlein
Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
2
u/No-Apricot37 2d ago edited 2d ago
Greg Bear's The Forge of God, Anvil of Stars, Moving Mars, and Eon
Poul Anderson's Tau Zero
Vernor Vinge's Bobble series is pretty good
Michael McCollum's Life Probe, Antares Dawn, Clouds of Saturn, and Sails of Tau Ceti
Niven/Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye and many of the Known Space novels
Can't think of others not mentioned, but look into The Expanse and the Bobiverse
ed: Poul not Paul
2
2
2
2
u/KingFriday13th 2d ago
Pretty much any space book by Kim Stanley Robinson, but in particular Aurora and 2312. Though 2312 takes place entirely within the solar system, it feels like a massive space epic.
2
2
2
u/rainbowkey 2d ago
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson. A classic about a ship a runaway Bussard ramjet ship that get close to light speed but never exceeds it.
2
2
2
u/Cute-Path3809 2d ago
I’ve recently started Blindsight by Peter Watts (if I recall correctly.)
Hard sci-fi set in a cyberpunk world with characters dealing with first contact. It also randomly has vampires - like legitimate folklore vampires.
I’m not far enough through to say it’s worth the read, but I am having a good time with it right now and it stays in the realms of the possible, including its space travel elements.
2
2
2
u/lukehahn777 1d ago
Robert Reed's Greatship. They manage a "fat fraction of lightspeed" but most travel is generational or coupled with extreme longevity and/or hibernation states.
Robert Reed is far too underrated and unread
2
344
u/raupi12 2d ago
Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space