SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Children of Time! I was equally engaged by the space travel and the corresponding story on the terraformed planet.

I’m partial to The Forever War :)

What have you liked or not liked before?? I've got stuff from dogfights in space to donut-making in space and everything in between!

Poul Anderson is always there if you want meticulous “hard science” backing up the story. Out of a very large bibliography I would suggest, off hand, “Starfarers,” “Tau Zero,” and “Tales of the Flying Mountains.”

Some Heinlein “juveniles” that come to mind are “The Rolling Stones,” “Time for the Stars,” Starman Jones,” and “Citizen of the Galaxy.”

Isaac Asimov’ first published story “Marooned off Vesta” was about survival in space, but he did not often get into technical details of space travel, or how life aboard a spaceship differed from any other vehicle. But his short story of a long journey in the Solar System, “The Martian Way” is a gem. (And accidentally prophetic.)

My favorites

House of Suns
Revelation Space
Pandora's Star

For space faring try:

We Are Legion by Dennis Taylor
First book in the Bobiverse series.

Of course there are all of the Known Space books by Larry Niven

The Dazzle of Day, by Molly Gloss is about a generation ship.

So is An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon.

These two aren’t so much about the travel itself, although the mechanics of the ship and the society aboard are prominent.

Raft and Revelation Space are worth checking out.
For Generationship action: Braking Day and Generation Ship
If you like space combat, I've plenty of recs. 😀

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will make the journey fun

The Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers is fun!

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear had a lot of travel across the universe plus many interesting alien species and a story with some mystery in it.

Agree with lots of the recs here already:

PANDORA’S STAR (Peter F Hamilton)
HOUSE OF SUNS (Alastair Reynolds)
CHILDREN OF TIME (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
THE ENGINES OF GOD (Jack McDevitt)
THIN AIR (Richard K Morgan)

Already a long list of great recommendations, but I didn't see any from CJ Cherryh, so let me add a few of hers:
Heavy Time
Hellburner
Tripoint
Downbelow Station

I would really recommend ‘The Expance’ Series by James S. A. Corey. It was made into a great tv Series too in recent years

I should have mentioned Poul Anderson’s “The Makeshift Rocket,” a short novel. It was originally published under a title which gave away a key plot element: not fatal, because it is humorous/farcical, but I won’t include it here.

Colin wrote: "Already a long list of great recommendations, but I didn't see any from CJ Cherryh, so let me add a few of hers:
Heavy Time
Hellburner
Tripoint
Downbelow Station"

The Chanur series is pretty good too

The Expendable series by James Alan Gardner is good, in part because of the limits placed on our heroes on each of the worlds they visit.

Elizabeth Moon has a great ship's captain sort of person in the Vatta's War series, starting with Trading in Danger.

(Both series I mention are complete, and iirc only seven books long.)

In The Reality Dysfunction and the rest of Night's Dawn (in my opinion much better than most of his other works) a lot of the action focuses on a bunch of spaceship captains. (I'm especially fond of the parts taking place near gas giant planets, but maybe that's just me.)
Most books by Alastair Reynolds feature a lot of space travel. (My favourite is Chasm City, in addition to his gazillion short stories.)

And how could I forget

Quarter Share (The Age of the Golden Clipper series), by Nathan Lowell. It’s like the SF version of Legends & Lattes (thanks to mod Ryan for the comparison). “Coffee and cake in space!”