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Down to earth, present or near-future, science or science fiction stories featuring space?
I just finished binging The Habitat, the awesome podcast about NASA's simulated mission to Mars. And I'm feeling the urge to read something along those lines: fiction or true stories and indulge my fascination with space (and things coming from it) and how that relates to contemporary imagination.
Any suggestions?
I've really enjoyed Seveneves, the first part of the book is very hard-sciency, second part.. well, it's a twist that I won't reveal. Highly recommend it!
The recent exemplar of this type of hard science fiction is The Martian, as @ThatFanFicGuy says. However, most of it is set on a planet (Mars), so I'm not sure if that's spacey enough for you.
There's an old short story called The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin which is a brutal depiction of the cold hard facts of space travel.
If you don't object to telepathy being included, there's Robert Heinlein's young adult novel Time for the Stars, which has telepathic twins communicating with exploratory spaceships - but the spaceships are very much based on realistic technology. The book explores how time dilation works.
And, of course, there's the classic Tau Zero by Poul Anderson which also explores time dilation, but from a much larger (and yet also very human) perspective.
Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is fantastic. Stanley blends fiction and hard science effortlessly and the result is deeply compelling and eminently readable. The book also features a highly plausible, possibly-conscious AI. Highly recommend.
I found 'Aurora' a bit boring and ultimately bleak, but still interesting.
"Down to earth [...] stories featuring space" is such a contradiction in terms!
I'm not quite sure what you're looking for.
Hahahah you're entirely correct, I did not consider the literal meaning of the expression!
But, if there's any doubt, by that I mean stories that involve space without employing technology that cannot be easily (and logically) traced to current human capabilities.
Ah. The term for what you're describing is "hard science fiction".
Yes, I know the term. I should have used it.
This always reminds me of Party Down.
I tried so hard to like 'Party Down'. I watched the whole first season. It just never clicked for me.
"Stories about space without sci-fi components" sounds like the definition of what you're looking for.
Not necessarily. Even the book you recommended - 'The Martian' - has sci-fi components. A rocket capable of taking humans to Mars does not yet exist. In fact, I don't believe such a rocket could be built or such a mission to Mars could be conducted using technology that exists today. We know what we need, but we can't quite do it just yet. Therefore, any story about such a mission must be fictional. It's still science fiction.
I'm not talking about "hard science fiction", I'm talking about "stories about space without sci-fi components" - which is different. Hard science fiction includes fictional components. Something "without sci-fi components" excludes fictional components by definition.
While a rocket to Mars might be hard science fiction, it's still fiction rather than fact. Therefore, a story which excludes science-fictional components must exclude a mission to Mars. But a mission to Mars would be a hard science fiction story.
See, this is pedantics, and while neither you nor I have anything against that – at least when it comes to discussing genre boundries – most people won't give a toss about the precision of such a definition.
By removing "sci-fi" from the definition, I'm banking on the fact that most people see sci-fi as something approaching Star Trek, or Mass Effect, or Mice Bikers from Mars. I'm banking on the fact that when people look at "space without sci-fi", they're thinking of something like The Martian, which is way in the vicinity of the zeitgeist's idea of what's currently possible. Focusing attentions, really.
Much like lands of yore, fictional genres have hard cores and imprecise borders...
Not really. A story about space exploration 20 years from now is still sci-fi.
Check out Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. It doesn't really have much to do with technology but it is an interesting "things coming from space" story and it isn't too unrealistic, unless you consider intelligent extraterrestrials to be far fetched. It is set a few centuries in the future though, so I don't know if that would be considered near future or not.
The Martian by Andy Weir. Apparently it's mostly realistic.
Planetes -- it's a great Anime (Manga too, but I've never read it) about garbage collectors in space. It's definitely one of the most down to earth sci-fi series I know of, very much focused on how the characters live in the near future.
Another great anime about space is Uchuu Kyoudai (Space Brothers). There's very little sci-fi, as its story follows one mans journey to become an astronaut in the modern day (or a few years in the future, I'm not sure exactly when it takes place).
Oh I love that one too! Did they ever start it up again past episode 100? I seem to remember it kinda fizzled out with some recap episodes at the end.
Space Brothers was a little less polished (at least to me) and took a bit to really heat up. But once they get on to the training section it's fantastic.
They never produced any more anime past that, no. But the Manga goes way past that point in the story and is well worth reading. I'm not sure exactly where the cutoff is though.