Recommendations for hard sci-fi set in space

[symbolhunter]

You might like Neal Asher. He uses a biologically oriented slant in his science fiction but includes quite a bit of technology too. Skinner or Cowl might be worth a try.

[s271]

William Barton Alpha Centauri and his When we were real

If you liked Solaris and think it fit your classification you may like Lem's Eden too. I liked it even more than Solaris. Also his Fiasco (I didn't quite liked that one but it fit into the same line as Solaris)

[Pennarin]

Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix; scientifically sound, with space travel, habitats, interesting aliens, mostly human stuff.

[Ash]

Ark, by Stephen Baxter. Its the follow up to Flood, which traces a last ditch attempt to get a very small colony off a doomed water flooded earth. Both books are terrific in my opinion

[albanlusitanae]

How hard is "hard" sf? I find Solaris an unusual inclusion under that rubric. Most adamant "hard sf" readers scorn anything using or implying FTL drives (which is risibly restrictive).

Well, in my perspective, being a fan of both Hard and Soft SF, I would say the fact that people don't consider any type of FTL part of Hard SF is taking the SF out of Hard SF, since we're not colonizing the universe yet are we?

What really troubles me in discussing FTL (apart from the brain hurting) is that people speak of FTL Drives as a whole, when they are splitted. For instance, the Battlestar Gallactica Modern FTL travelling is not exactly travelling, is a jump (much like in Event Horizon); you would have to have a Warp Drive concept (a la Star Trek) to be talking of FTL Drives.

Anyway, anything from Arthur Clarke.

And hi guys I'm the noob

Alban

[Steven L Jordan]

I believe FTL flight is "soft" SF; however, the idea that there may be other methods of traversing vast distances that don't require pushing a load is, in my estimation, "hard" SF.

The trick is in the description of how it is done, of course. Sometimes it seems the only real difference between hard and soft SF is that hard SF tries to explain everything, often to the detriment of the flow of the story; while soft SF just skips the description and jumps to the chase.

I like to think of most of my books as "medium-hard," or, trying to be scientifically sound and accurate, but spending only as much time detailing it for the reader as is necessary to advance the story.

[offog]

books on man's exploration of space, more specifically long space journeys with themes of the human condition, man vs. technology, and space paranoia or claustrophobia.

Ark, by Stephen Baxter. Its the follow up to Flood, which traces a last ditch attempt to get a very small colony off a doomed water flooded earth. Both books are terrific in my opinion

Ark fits what you're looking for quite closely as humans adapt to long journeys through space in cramped quarters.

I haven't read it but it sounds like you may like Promised Land by Brian Stableford. Described this way by the Encyclopedia of SF:

society of colonists whose social structure is based on that developed over generations in the starship on which they arrived.

[Woofdog2]

I haven't read it but it sounds like you may like Promised Land by Brian Stableford. Described this way by the Encyclopedia of SF:

This is actually part of the 5-book series Halcyon Drift series, where the protagonist is a pilot with an intelligent parasite/symbiote living in his brain, and is much more an action series than anything, albeit one that I enjoyed a great deal. In terms of what the OP is describing, this isn't it (though I really like everything stableford wrote in the 70's) All five books seem capped to 150 pages or less, as does nearly everything stableford wrote that was published by DAW.

[RocketBoy]

"A World Out of Time" by Larry Niven as well as "World of Ptavs," "Tales of Known Space" and "Ringword" and "Ringworld Engineers."