I can list off favorite fantasy series without even thinking about it. Sci-fi? Much more difficult to do. While there seems to be no shortage of sci-fi in TV, film, and video games to appeal to my RPG-er side, I always feel like it's a crap shoot when I pick up a sci-fi novel. About the closest I can get is military sci-fi.
Where's Firefly/Serenity-style fiction? Where's a sci-fi series with character development like that found in (the revised) Battlestar Galactica? Where's the action-adventure of a Farscape, Stargate, or DS9?
I'm looking for entertaining sci-fi that takes stories, tropes, etc. and puts them into a coherent sci-fi setting. Hell, I don't care if it's a cop show set in space if it isn't boring.
So can the ranks of Paizodom help me?
Definitions of what Good Gamer Sci-Fi is NOT(by me):
1. Preachy sci-fi is not good gamer sci-fi. I don't want to be persuaded or lectured to. I want to read something that screams "hell, yeah that'd make a great campaign" (not a one-shot).
2. Star Wars is not good gamer sci-fi (although it can come damn close). Star Wars is science-fantasy, a fantasy with sci-fi window dressing. Don't get me wrong, I like my Star Wars and mine it when I can, but it's not gamer sci-fi.
3. One-trick pony settings/stories are not good gamer sci-fi. The one trick pony is the sci-fi story that focuses on a single element that is usually hyper-inflated relative to the rest of the setting's technology. Example#1: the protagonist is a cyborg and nothing but the plight of a cyborg factors into the plot/series. Example#2: The society is modified by one singular technology and the characters are barely relatable due to that one aspect overriding all others -- predictable story about the "rediscovery" of their lost humanity ensues...
4. Crappy tie-ins are not good gamer sci-fi. The original 3 Halo novels are good/passable gamer sci-fi. Most of the starcraft novels I've read are not -- they're barely readable. The sad thing about this is that the tie-in is usually the most-likely to contain good gamer sci-fi. Unfortunately, the writing often kills it.
So any help out there? I'd really like to dive into some good sci-fi novels & series but I'm tired of being disappointed. In advance, thanks!
Examples of Good Gamer Sci-Fi in other media. (Some occasionally are at odds with 1-3, however, overall they win out.)
Farscape
Firefly/Serenity
Babylon 5
Starcraft (video game)
Halo Video games
Mass Effect video game
Terminator movies
Alien, Aliens
Predator
Exploration stories that have conflict worth caring about.
Jericho (post-apocalyptic)
SOME Star Trek
If you are looking for space opera with a lot of believable/yoinkable concepts, the science fiction of Peter Hamilton would be my recommendation. His backdrop universes are believable yet exotic, and he writes very good page turning stuff.
That would be the Peter F. Hamilton I started a thread about a few days back? ;-)
Anyway, the choices:
Peter F. Hamilton
Writes big-ideas space opera. Neural nanonics, kinetic harpoons, wormholes, sentient space habitats, cyborg cosmoniks etc. His Night's Dawn Trilogy is a massive and colourful playground brimming with cool ideas. The trilogy even has a companion volume, The Confederation Handbook, that makes a good roleplaying resource. His later Commonwealth duology and its sequel, The Void Trilogy, aren't quite as good but still have some nifty ideas. I like the idea about using wormholes to travel to other planets and thus not needing spaceships.
Alastair Reynolds
Writes dark, 'realistic' space opera (no FTL travel, close respect being paid to the laws of physics) with a gothic influence. Fascinated by the melding of humanity and technology, sometimes mechanical technology (cyborgs) and sometimes biological tech (as with the horrific Melding Plague). For something darker and more interesting, check out his stand-alone CHASM CITY and the trilogy set in the same universe, REVELATION SPACE, REDEMPTION ARK and ABSOLUTION GAP. Quite a lot of roleplaying potential there, from a murdery mystery in Chasm City to political intrigue on Mars to a war story on Sky's Edge.
Richard Morgan
With BLACK MAN (aka THIRTEEN in the US), Morgan created arguably SF's most important incendiary novel since STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. However, it's his TAKESHI KOVACS 'trilogy' - ALTERED CARBON, BROKEN ANGELS and WOKEN FURIES - which is better suited to roleplaying (BLACK MAN probably violates the 'no preaching' view as well). The ability to hop from body to body, swapping out skills and abilities for others and the use of high-tech weaponry in a 26th Century post-cyberpunk environment is tailor-made for roleplaying, in my view.
Iain M. Banks
Banks' Culture is the ultimate SF utopia, although it is not always a peaceful or idyllic one and it employs a group called Special Circumstances to deal with problems as they crop up. Its treatment of sentient AI is particularly notable. Has been listed as an inspiration for a lot of modern SF, most notably HALO, where the titular construct is based on a Culture Orbital (and only Niven's Ringworld by extrapolation, as Banks wanted to create a 'sane' version of the Ringworld which would actually work). Probably CONSIDER PHLEBAS is the best place to start, but PLAYER OF GAMES, USE OF WEAPONS and EXCESSION are good ones to check out with lots of excellent ideas suited for roleplaying. Plus, best starship names ever (one Culture battlecruiser is called the Frank Exchange of Views, for example).
Ian McDonald
Looking at most Western SF, you'd be forgiven to think that the rest of the world will cease to exist in the near future outside the USA and Europe. McDonald is putting this right with a thematic trilogy looking at the mid-to-late 21st Century in other countries: RIVER OF GODS is set in India, BRASYL in Brazil and the forthcoming THE DERVISH HOUSE in Turkey. Likely to generate some interesting SF ideas in a non-Western setting. I'm still waiting for a big SF novel that really gets to grips with China's role in the future though (David Wingrove's CHUNG KUO series tries to get to grips with it, but falls apart towards the end).
Tad Williams
Best known for fantasy, but his SF OTHERLAND series is superior. It's got the cultural variety thing going on (most of it is set in South Africa) but it's also got a very good handle on cyberspace. Useful if you are looking for a setting that wrong-foots the players (as the cyberspace setting allows players to partake in a fantasy environment inside their hard SF campaign).
I'm still waiting for a big SF novel that really gets to grips with China's role in the future though
China Mountain Zhang is very well-written, though some may have trouble swallowing the premise: Communist China succeeds in starting a communist revolution in the USA in the 21st century, then proceeds to dominate and colonize the world. I'm still not sure whether it was an alternate-history novel or not, but the mood and writing were excellent.
One word : Dune
Let's not forget Larry Niven.
DUNE probably falls into the same category as the STAR WARS stipulation in the OP: too many fantastical ideas, not enough hard SF to meet the criteria. On its own merits, yeah, great SF universe, even if heavily tarnished by all the recent hack tie-in novels.
Larry Niven had some great ideas but his KNOWN SPACE universe is a little old-school by modern standards. Some nice ideas though.
DUNE probably falls into the same category as the STAR WARS stipulation in the OP: too many fantastical ideas, not enough hard SF to meet the criteria.
Fantastical ideas? I must say I really did not get this feeling. Everything in Dune is deeply rooted in psychology, biology, linguistics, anthropology, political sciences, etc.
I share your judgement about the tie-in novels, just keep to the books authored by Frank Herbert.
Anyway, if you want Hard Sci-Fi, the Foundation cycle by Aasimov is top notch too. The Hyperion novels by Dan Simmons are also a really good reading, and would make a good setting.
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest - maybe not a campaign, but for 2-3 games, you have a solid setting and a fun mystery for your players to resolve.
Christopher Priest is awesome. Haven't read INVERTED WORLD and I have to say that it would be nigh-on impossible to turn works like THE SEPARATION or THE AFFIRMATION into RP campaigns. THE PRESTIGE (the one the movie is based on) could be useful for the 19th Century atmosphere though.
What I meant by DUNE is that it has a lost of 'science-fantasy' ideas similar to STAR WARS, such as people using swords to fight with, a handy magical substance which can give premonitions of the future and so on. It is a great book, beyond any doubt, but I just thought it might be veering too closely to the no-science-fantasy stipulation of the OP.