Book picks similar to
Ship of Strangers by Bob Shaw


science-fiction
sf
fiction
fantascienza

Embers of War


Gareth L. Powell - 2018
    Seeking to atone, she joins the House of Reclamation, an organisation dedicated to rescuing ships in distress.But, stripped of her weaponry and emptied of her officers, she struggles in the new role she’s chosen for herself. When a ship goes missing in a disputed system, Trouble Dog and her new crew of misfits and loners, captained by Sal Konstanz, an ex-captain of a medical frigate who once fought against Trouble Dog, are assigned to investigate and save whoever they can.Meanwhile, light years away, intelligence officer Ashton Childe is tasked with locating and saving the poet, Ona Sudak, who was aboard the missing ship, whatever the cost. In order to do this, he must reach out to the only person he considers a friend, even if he’s not sure she can be trusted. What Childe doesn’t know is that Sudak is not the person she appears to be.Quickly, what appears to be a straightforward rescue mission turns into something far more dangerous, as Trouble Dog, Konstanz and Childe, find themselves at the centre of a potential new conflict that could engulf not just mankind but the entire galaxy.If she is to survive and save her crew, Trouble Dog is going to have to remember how to fight.

One Way


S.J. Morden - 2018
    But the company that's been contracted to construct a new Mars base, has made promises they can't fulfill and is desperate enough to cut corners. The first thing to go is the automation . . . the next thing they'll have to deal with is the eight astronauts they'll send to Mars, when there aren't supposed to be any at all.Frank - father, architect, murderer - is recruited for the mission to Mars with the promise of a better life, along with seven of his most notorious fellow inmates. But as his crew sets to work on the red wasteland of Mars, the accidents mount up, and Frank begins to suspect they might not be accidents at all. As the list of suspect grows shorter, it's up to Frank to uncover the terrible truth before it's too late.Dr. S. J. Morden trained as a rocket scientist before becoming the author of razor-sharp, award-winning science fiction. Perfect for fans of Andy Weir's The Martian and Richard Morgan, One Way takes off like a rocket, pulling us along on a terrifying, epic ride with only one way out.

The Dragon Lensman


David A. Kyle - 1980
    "Doc" Smith's visionary Lensmen series of stories began in 1934 in the pages of Amazing Stories, and when it finished in 1948 it was universally recognized as the greatest space opera yet written. In telling the tale of a cosmos-spanning battle between good and evil, the Lensmen saga encompassed two entire galaxies in collision, each home to a primordial race of nearly limitless power. On one side were the Arisians, uplifting agents of wisdom who had taken it upon themselves to mentor the younger races and steer them towards the enlightenment they called Civilization. On the other were the Eddorians, embodiments of crushing efficiency and unthinking obedience who had woven together a vast web of tyrannies called the Boskone, through which they plotted the enslavement of all life. As their greatest weapon in the fight against the Boskone, the Arisians created the Lenses -- almost-living complexities of crystal that released and amplified their wearers' latent psychic powers. Those chosen for this honor were called Lensmen, and as the leaders of the Galactic Patrol they formed Civilization's spearhead against the Boskone. Within the Žlite ranks of the Lensmen was an even more rarified Žlite -- the four Second Stage Lensmen, one from each of the races which the Arisians had chosen as the most capable defenders of their galaxy. It is one of these Second Stage Lensmen -- the Velantian named Worsel -- that David A. Kyle chose to headline his first authorized sequel to Smith's Lensmen canon: The Dragon Lensman. As The Dragon Lensman opens, the Boskonian conspiracy seems to have been vanquished with its defeat at the great Battle of Klovia, and the victorious Galactic Patrol is busy re-orienting itself to face the new challenges of policing a galaxy instead of defending it against a ruthless invader. Among those adjusting to the new reality is Second Stage Lensman Worsel, the legendary warrior/scientist famed for his intelligence and dedication to the fight against ignorance and evil. Like all of his species, Worsel resembles the mythological dragons of old Tellus (Earth), with a sinewy, ten-meter-long body covered in scales and boasting great wings and terrifying claws and teeth. But Worsel's real strength is his mind and its unmatched psychic abilities, concentrated and focused by the Lens shining among his many eye-stalks. And it is the intuition bred of that power that now draws Worsel to the Velantians' incredible archive, the 18-mile-wide artificial moon known as the Planetoid of Knowledge, where he feels certain something important is waiting for him. He is right -- but what awaits him on POK is more than he bargained for, and before long Worsel and his fellow Lensmen are racing against time to confront a threat that almost no one had thought possible: machines becoming self-aware and battling against organic Civilization, their calcuating computer brains invisible to any kind of psychic detection! To counter this new menace, the Dragon Lensman finds himself hurtling through space to rendez-vous with the one Lensman who understands robots well enough to strategize against an inorganic uprising -- the mysterious Twenty-Four of Six, whose knowledge of machines turns out to be deeper and more hard-won than even Worsel could guess. Soon it becomes clear that Civilization will need every bit of that knowledge, and more besides, to face the enemies that are now revealing themselves. For behind the overt power there lurks a vastly more dangerous covert one, and to defeat it Worsel will not only have to challenge the worst fears of his race, but also discover the secret of the young Lensman with whom he must entrust his life -- a secret that will shake the very foundations of the Galactic Patrol!

Dark Orbit


Carolyn Ives Gilman - 2015
    When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate. Thora was once a member of the interplanetary elite, but since her prophetic delusions helped mobilize a revolt on Orem, she’s been banished to the farthest reaches of space, because of the risk that her very presence could revive unrest.Upon arrival, the team finds an extraordinary crystalline planet, laden with dark matter. Then a crew member is murdered and Thora mysteriously disappears. Thought to be uninhabited, the planet is in fact home to a blind, sentient species whose members navigate their world with a bizarre vocabulary and extrasensory perceptions.Lost in the deep crevasses of the planet among these people, Thora must battle her demons and learn to comprehend the native inhabitants in order to find her crewmates and warn them of an impending danger. But her most difficult task may lie in persuading the crew that some powers lie beyond the boundaries of science.

Proxima


Stephen Baxter - 2013
    The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light... The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun. How would it be to live on such a world?

Survival


Julie E. Czerneda - 2004
    Czerneda has earned a reputation in science fiction circles for her ability to create beautifully crafted, imaginative, yet believably realized alien races. In Survival, the first novel in her new series, Species Imperative, she draws upon this talent to build races, characters, and a universe which will draw readers into a magnificent tale of interstellar intrigue, as an Earth scientist is caught up in a terrifying interspecies conflict. Senior co-administrator of the Norcoast Salmon Research Facility, Dr. Mackenzie Connor, Mac to her friends and colleagues, was a trained biologist, whose work had definitely become her life. And working at Norcoast Base, set in an ideal location just where the Tannu River sped down the west side of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast was the perfect situation for Mac. She and fellow scientist Dr. Emily Mamani were just settling in to monitor this year's salmon runs when their research was interrupted by the unprecedented arrival of Brymn, the first member of the alien race known as the Dhryn to ever set foot on Earth.Brymn was an archaeologist, and much of his research had focused on a region of space known as the Chasm, a part of the universe that was literally dead, all of its worlds empty of any life-forms, though traces existed of the civilizations that must once have flourished in the region. Brymn had sought out Mac because she was a biologist -- a discipline strictly forbidden among his own people -- and he felt that through her expertise she might be able to help him discover what had created the Chasm. But Mac had little interest in alien races and in studies that ranged beyond Earth, and as politely as she was capable of, she tried to make it clear that she was unwilling to abandon her own work.However, the decision was soon taken out of her hands when a mysterious and devastating attack on the Base resulted in the abduction of Emily, and forced Mac to flee for her life with Brymn and the Earth special agents who were escorting him. Suddenly, it appeared that Earth itself might be under attack by the legendary race the Dhryn called the Ro, the beings they thought might be the destructive force behind the Chasm. Cut off from everything and everyone she knew, Mac found herself in grave danger and charged with the responsibility of learning everything she could that might possibly aid Earth in protecting the human race from extinction...

Dancers in the Afterglow


Jack L. Chalker - 1978
    Ondine was a resort planet. Sixteen million tourists travelled there from just about every world you could think of to live and love in sixteen million different ways. Then came the machists... They had gobbled up world after world, spreading their culture to thousands of different races with a brutal, vicious, but most effective system. They were inhuman, unthinking...uncaring. The Combine had already seen what they had done on other worlds, seen whole populations converted into something horrible...something not quite human, non-thinking and no longer caring. Now they had captured Ondine, and no human could save the planet. And then Daniel came to Judgment. Daniel was a cyborg, a former fighter pilot now wedded to a master computer and life-support system housed in a flying golden egg. He was the Combine scientists' finest creation, a spaceship that could control twenty-two robot slaves. He was the perfect saviour for Ondine, but for one thing. Everyone seemed to forget that deep inside that golden egg was a very human being...

In the Days of the Comet


H.G. Wells - 1906
    But mankind is too busy hating, stealing, scheming, and killing to care. As luminous green trails of cosmic dust and vapor stream across the heavens, blood flows beneath: nations wage all-out war, bitter strikes erupt, and jealous lovers plot revenge and murder. The earth slips past the comet by the narrowest of margins, but all succumb to the gases in its tail. When mankind wakes up, everyone is completely and profoundly different. An ill-fated romance between Willie Leadford and Nettie Stuart unfolds in a world buried in misery and bent on its own destruction. After the earth passes through the comet's tail, suffering, pettiness, and injustice melt away. Willie, Nettie, and everyone around them are reborn. They now see themselves and their world in a dramatically new and wonderful way.