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.
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.
I really enjoyed the first and could not get into the second in the children of time series
There’s a third now, I need to read it still. I liked the second, though
It’s possible Just wasn’t the flavor I was looking for at the time. I’ll give another go at some point. I hear great things from people so it’s probably just send me a thing
I loved the first two, but I had a hard time getting through the third. It has interesting concepts but it takes a long time to make its point. Plot structure spoilers:
spoiler
The main reveal should have happened half way through, not at the end.