Favorite Science Fiction Books
- Thread starter Timerover51
- Start date
Numenera and maybe Sky Realms of Journe give the impession of having had some influence from the Book of The New Sun. You could easily argue BOTNS as fantasy or science-fiction.
There are quite a few that I could have put into the top 5. Neuromancer could have gotten a mention, as could a number of Niven/Pournelle titles, Vorkosigan Saga, various bits of Andre Norton's, U.K. leGuin's work. I've had a soft spot for the Stainless Steel Rat for about 40 years - it did a good job of not quite taking itself seriously.
Having said that, a lot of the Asimov, Clarke stuff that people cite in these sorts of polls never really did a lot for me. Some of it was quite good but i could never really rave about (say) the Foundation trilogy.
I've never read Ender's Game or the Hyperion Cantos, nor any of the Dune sequels. The only one of Stephenson's I've read was Snow Crash, which is already looking a bit dated. I have heard that Cryptonomicon and Diamond Age are considered to be rather better.
I've read some of the Iain M Banks (Player of Games, the Algebraist and one or two others). Those were pretty good and could have made semi-finals at least.
My father was a science-fiction fan, right back in the golden-age era, and had a shed full of old science-fiction books. Thus, I had occasion to read quite a lot of golden-age stuff as a child. Of the older stuff I read, some highlights were:
- Heinlein, Heinlein, Heinlein. Citizen of the Galaxy, Time Enough for Love, The Number of the Beast, Glory Road, The Man who Sold the Moon, The Door Into Summer (notable for predicting computer-aided design), The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers etc.
- Murray Leinster's Calhoun/Murgatroyd stories - interstellar doctor bodging around in a small medical ship with a semi-intelligent sidekick. Better than they sound.
- James White's Sector General series. Hospital serving many different species. More aliens than Star Wars. Some were a bit rubber-suit-ish, but quite often they got a fairly good treatment of unusual psychology/physiology. Great resource for ideas for alien species.
- James H Schmitz's Telzey Amberdon (Honourable Mention for the Witches of Karres). In hindsight the author seems to have a thing for young girls, but I lifted a lot of material for psionics from the Telzey Amberdon books. Good stories nonetheless (published in the '50s/'60s so nothing lewd).
- Keith Laumer's Retief of the CDT. Not taking itself quite seriously, and I believe this was the inspiration for the Diplomat service in Supplement 4.
- In the same vein, the Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series. Also, not 100% serious (as was often the case with his work). The author also did a number of other works - The Technicolour Time Machine, Make Room, Make Room (made into the Soylent Green Movie), Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers (takes the piss out of EE Smith), Bill the Galactic Hero (takes the piss out of Starship Troopers), the Deathworld Trilogy (pretty good). The man from P.I.G. was a YA title, and a favourite of mine at age 7-8 or so. You could fairly easily adapt the central theme to Traveller.
- A Bertram Chandler's Grimes series. These were pretty good space opera, worth a read.
- H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy series, and the paratime books, especially Gunpowder God. Never read Space Viking but pretty much everything of Piper's that I read I liked.
- Sadly, I never really warmed to Dominic Flandry (sort of James Bond in space, and written about the same time) or Earl Dumarest. Not sure why. I did like Anderson's Van Rijn stories, though. I've only read a couple of the Dumarest books (2 and 3) so I'd be open to see if anyone thinks the later ones were any better.
- Niven's Known space works (Ringworld etc.) were pretty good. Most of us old farts have probably read them, but if you haven't they're worth a look. The Niven/Pournelle collaborations (The Mote in God's Eye, Lucifer's Hammer, Footfall etc.) tend to be pretty good. Pournelle's Falkenberg's Legion was good enough to spin off an ATU that I did about 25 or 30 years ago, and some of this other stuff in that timeline (King David's Spaceship, for example) is also pretty good.
- Andre Norton - a lot of her works were pretty good.
- Other random highlights: Way Station (Simak IIRC), The Stone God Awakens (Philip Jose Farmer), The Ship Who Sang (Anne McAffrey) The Rainbow Ring (YA title by Lester Del Rey), at least 7yo me liked it. Jack of Eagles (James Blish), The Null-A series (A.E. Van Vogt). John Christopher's Tripods, Death of Grass and others, John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos etc. (slightly dated but quite a good story).
Note also that some of these are viewed through 30-40 year old rose glasses, so opinions on the merits of the works should be taken with a grain of salt. Some are genuinely good.
1 Wood boring insect species native to New Zealand.
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Telzey and Retief are the ones I couldn't remember yesterday. @nobby-w, I've read most of the rest you mentioned as well.
A number of sequels didn't work for me either. Dune was good, but the sequels seemed, well, off, from what the author was capable of. I found Asimov to become more and more dull as the years went by.
Of course, the first novel can be a work of years, while a sequel is rushed and less time spent on plot and character development.
A number of sequels didn't work for me either. Dune was good, but the sequels seemed, well, off, from what the author was capable of. I found Asimov to become more and more dull as the years went by.
Of course, the first novel can be a work of years, while a sequel is rushed and less time spent on plot and character development.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
The introductory Telzey story was interesting, after that it sort of got boring; I always wandered what happened to her aunt.
It's a good 30 years or more since I read them, so I'm afraid it's a bit dimly remembered.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I always hoped that Tick-Tock eventually got her, or maybe Iron Thoughts.
By the way, the original Telzey story can be downloaded at Project Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30458/30458-h/30458-h.htm
Nice thread resurrect....
The books that jump to mind are the ones that were not too intense, and I would enjoy rereading.
1) Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. "Bugs Mr. Rico! Zillions of em!"
2) Lone Star Planet by H. Beam Piper - tongue-in-cheek, and reminds me of my Traveller game sessions; same way like The Princess Bride reminds me of my D&D days in college (early 80's). Slugthrowers and Vargrs
3) Tales of Known Space by Larry Niven
4) The Stainless Steel Rat for President by Harry Harrison. Favorite of a good series.
5) The High Crusade by Poul Anderson
Honorable Mentions: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, King David's Spaceship, Iceworld, Dune, & Endless Universe.
The books that jump to mind are the ones that were not too intense, and I would enjoy rereading.
1) Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. "Bugs Mr. Rico! Zillions of em!"
2) Lone Star Planet by H. Beam Piper - tongue-in-cheek, and reminds me of my Traveller game sessions; same way like The Princess Bride reminds me of my D&D days in college (early 80's). Slugthrowers and Vargrs
3) Tales of Known Space by Larry Niven
4) The Stainless Steel Rat for President by Harry Harrison. Favorite of a good series.
5) The High Crusade by Poul Anderson
Honorable Mentions: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, King David's Spaceship, Iceworld, Dune, & Endless Universe.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
You can find a lot of Piper's book at Project Gutenberg. I do wonder if that is where Marc got his inspiration for the Vargr. It is a great read.
As for High Crusade, the classic Low Tech meets High Tech, and High Tech looses. One of Anderson's best.
MThompson016
SOC-12
If you're going to mention Starship Troopers, than you might want to look at Space Cadet. A very different image of a miltarized space force, as well as Heinlien's short story "The Long Watch".
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
One of my favorite Heinlein's was The Rolling Stones. It has been a long time since I read Space Cadet.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Heinlein is a very mixed bag, and despite it's a times adolescent writing style and naive viewpoint, a lot of his work shouldn't be read by ayone not mature enough to distinguish between the themes he presents and the agenda he's trying to push.
In Space Cadet, what I remember is the disdain for blind nationalism and twenty IQ point deficit for SpaceMarines.
In Space Cadet, what I remember is the disdain for blind nationalism and twenty IQ point deficit for SpaceMarines.
harunmushod
SOC-7
Resurrecting this thread, with a reminder of the rules.
Mine would be:
Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
Martians Go Home! By Fredric Brown
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Thanks for resurrecting this thread. I had forgotten that I posted it. I will add a few more from me.
Med Ship Man, by Murray Leinster
Pandora's Planet, by Christopher Anvil
Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Cosmic Computer, by H. Beam Piper
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, by Jules Verne
MThompson016
SOC-12
From a blog post in 2016, and expanded some, within the rules:
1. Space Cadet, Heinlein
2. A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Anderson
3. On Basilisk Station, Weber
4. Foundation, Asimov
5. Mote in God's Eye, Niven and Pournelle
1. Space Cadet, Heinlein
2. A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Anderson
3. On Basilisk Station, Weber
4. Foundation, Asimov
5. Mote in God's Eye, Niven and Pournelle
Spinward Scout
SOC-14 5K
This thread was started in 2013. With that last post in 2016.
And it's now my summer reading list.
Necromancy Rocks!
And it's now my summer reading list.
Necromancy Rocks!
Micah461
SOC-9
When I was 10 I hated reading. Just didn't find anything I liked in the library. My Mother, a teacher herself desperate to find anything I would read gave me "2nd Stage Lensman" by E.E. "Doc" Smith. I still have that book from my 10th birthday in 1972. The Lensman Series will always be my favorite. Anything by Heinlein, H. Beam Piper, and David Brin (a personal friend). Lastly a very silly series by Steven Campbell about his character Hard Luck Hank.
Huh. Timerover51 started this thread in 2013, back when I was active on CotI almost every day. I wonder why I didn't post to it back then? Better late than never, I suppose.
1. Four-Day Planet - H.Beam Piper (also Uller Uprising, Fuzzy trilogy, Space Viking... really, anything Piper ever wrote. Seems like a good place to plug the near-comprehensive "H.Beam Piper Megapack" on kindle for $0.95, or individual books for free on Gutenberg.)
2. Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein (also The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Citizen of the Galaxy, almost everything he wrote prior to Moon, but =nothing= after that)
3. Poul Anderson; sorry, I really can't narrow his works down to just one favorite! He had a huge future history including the time of the Polesotechnic League (Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn) and the later Terran Empire (Dominic Flandry) plus many non-related books (The Star Fox). He bought me beer at El Paso Con in 1990 (should have been the other way around, I know, but it turned out the bar would only accept charges on a hotel room keycard) and signed a bunch of my books. RIP
4. The Mote in God's Eye - Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (also Pournelle's many other books in same setting of CoDominium and Empire)
Alright then, those are my old traditional favorites, mostly read originally in paperback or library books back in the 1970s-1980s. Pretty much all of them have already been listed by one or more friends here already. But did we stop reading then?
As for me, it seems I mostly did stop reading for pleasure for 20 years or so, except for picking up and re-reading my favorites of the above. Funny how that correlates with graduation from law school in 1989, birth of first child in 1991, opening my own solo law practice in 1993, births of additional children in 1993, 1995, 1996...
5. Mirror Dance - Lois McMaster Bujold. Hard to pick one favorite of the Vorkosiverse novels, but that one has the best of the character and action elements that I like, without so much of the over-the-top comedy of some later books (Butterbugs, I'm looking at you!). Bujold is one author I'd started to read in the 1980s and continued to read everything she produced through the 1990s and beyond, although I got bogged down in the second Sharing Knife novel and didn't follow any more of that series. And now I can't afford her Penric and Desdemona novellas.
Recent Years: Since becoming disabled by Trigeminal Neuralgia, medications for that, and related surgery bungled causing brain injury, I no longer have any budget to buy books except for the very cheapest, and am usually feeling too sickly to get out to the library, so I read almost exclusively via the kindle app on my phone. I watch (and get a couple free email newsletters) for interesting-sounding books of $1 or less (free is the best, otherwise I check them out first by free sample). Also my wife signed me up for the Kindle Unlimited subscription, which allows me to "check out" participating kindle books as if from a library, and I find most of my books through that. The listed books that follow were all read via kindle; some also have paperbacks available for order, although I find the listed prices shocking!!
6. The Knockabouts - DK Williamson. Very Traveller-ish setting and action, except better plotted than any game I've ever been in! (Sequel: The Knockabouts in the Maw of Madness)
7. Holy War series - Rick Partlow (includes Genesis, Judgment Day , Revelation, Armageddon) Almost all of Rick Partlow's mil-SF series cover some aspect of the long war between Humanity and the Tahni species, which is a religious imperative from the Tahni side, mostly self-defense from the Human PoV. This series covers the first war in the sequence, from Contact through the first Tahni sneak attack, subsequent ebb and flow of interstellar war, to the truce that will put things on hold until it all breaks down in the next war. I really liked the variety of viewpoint characters, including a Navy Captain/Admiral with overall command of whatever system he is in; a fighter pilot (later CAG) for the down-n-dirty view of fighter actions; a Marine for boarding and ground actions; a cyborg Special Operator organizing resistance on occupied worlds; even some of the Tahni commanders (which is something new in this series). Although this Holy War series is my favorite of the bunch for reasons stated, I also like Partlow's other series: Recon, Drop Trooper, Glory Boy/Birthright, Duty Honor Planet, Enemies & Allies (different universe entirely).
8. Duchy of Terra series (The Terran Privateer et al) - Glynn Stewart. Good news: Terran scientists have developed a hyperdrive! Bad news: Under accepted Galactic Law, that opens us up for conquest by local powers! Turns out that the A!Tol Imperium is actually fairly benevolent and will protect us from slavers and genocidal fanatics, plus we manage to turn circumstances to become a semi-autonomous duchy rather than a system directly ruled by the Imperium. The series is primarily mil-SF and political intrigue, but I would love to run a Traveller campaign in this setting. Lots of room for merchants, diplomacy, exploration, military action as big as you want it (mercs, Duchy, Imperial), establishing colonies in the zone reserved for us or in unexplored space... very open.
Aww, I could go on at some length about the various SF series of Glynn Stewart (not even mentioning his fantasy stuff; he is very prolific). Two interesting things are that 1) most of his series make me want to play Traveller in their settings; and 2) from some of the rather specific words and phrases that he uses in his stories, I'm about 95% sure that Glynn Stewart is or has been a Traveller player himself. Anyway, onward!
9. Cherry Drop (also China Mike, Fresh Fruit and Ammo, Gnamma, and Honor Flight) - P.A. Piatt. This series details the military career of Abner Fortis, ISMC, from Ensign straight out of the Academy to honored Colonel, Commandant of the Corps, beloved by his men.
10. Marko Kloos - Palladium series, Frontlines series, Lucky Thirteen. Just because he appears as #10 means nothing. Somebody had to be #10. Marko Kloos is just as good as any of the people and books I've already listed. His Frontlines series is mostly mil-SF, but pretty good. His protagonist starts out a grunt but becomes a combat controller (think forward observer on steroids). The Palladium series is another that starts after a major war has ended, and examines the effects of post-war life on various people. Yeah, I'd like to play Traveller there...
Well, I was gonna limit myself to just 10, but I really can't stop without at least name-dropping a couple more authors that I think at least influence my ideas for things I could possibly do with Traveller going forward ...
L.L. Richman (Biowar series)
Andrew Moriarty (TransGalactic Insurance, Orbital Claims Adjustor, A Corporate Coup) great hard-SF Traveller-ish stuff!
Jamie McFarlane (Privateer Tales)
1. Four-Day Planet - H.Beam Piper (also Uller Uprising, Fuzzy trilogy, Space Viking... really, anything Piper ever wrote. Seems like a good place to plug the near-comprehensive "H.Beam Piper Megapack" on kindle for $0.95, or individual books for free on Gutenberg.)
2. Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein (also The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Citizen of the Galaxy, almost everything he wrote prior to Moon, but =nothing= after that)
3. Poul Anderson; sorry, I really can't narrow his works down to just one favorite! He had a huge future history including the time of the Polesotechnic League (Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn) and the later Terran Empire (Dominic Flandry) plus many non-related books (The Star Fox). He bought me beer at El Paso Con in 1990 (should have been the other way around, I know, but it turned out the bar would only accept charges on a hotel room keycard) and signed a bunch of my books. RIP
4. The Mote in God's Eye - Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (also Pournelle's many other books in same setting of CoDominium and Empire)
Alright then, those are my old traditional favorites, mostly read originally in paperback or library books back in the 1970s-1980s. Pretty much all of them have already been listed by one or more friends here already. But did we stop reading then?
As for me, it seems I mostly did stop reading for pleasure for 20 years or so, except for picking up and re-reading my favorites of the above. Funny how that correlates with graduation from law school in 1989, birth of first child in 1991, opening my own solo law practice in 1993, births of additional children in 1993, 1995, 1996...
5. Mirror Dance - Lois McMaster Bujold. Hard to pick one favorite of the Vorkosiverse novels, but that one has the best of the character and action elements that I like, without so much of the over-the-top comedy of some later books (Butterbugs, I'm looking at you!). Bujold is one author I'd started to read in the 1980s and continued to read everything she produced through the 1990s and beyond, although I got bogged down in the second Sharing Knife novel and didn't follow any more of that series. And now I can't afford her Penric and Desdemona novellas.
Recent Years: Since becoming disabled by Trigeminal Neuralgia, medications for that, and related surgery bungled causing brain injury, I no longer have any budget to buy books except for the very cheapest, and am usually feeling too sickly to get out to the library, so I read almost exclusively via the kindle app on my phone. I watch (and get a couple free email newsletters) for interesting-sounding books of $1 or less (free is the best, otherwise I check them out first by free sample). Also my wife signed me up for the Kindle Unlimited subscription, which allows me to "check out" participating kindle books as if from a library, and I find most of my books through that. The listed books that follow were all read via kindle; some also have paperbacks available for order, although I find the listed prices shocking!!
6. The Knockabouts - DK Williamson. Very Traveller-ish setting and action, except better plotted than any game I've ever been in! (Sequel: The Knockabouts in the Maw of Madness)
7. Holy War series - Rick Partlow (includes Genesis, Judgment Day , Revelation, Armageddon) Almost all of Rick Partlow's mil-SF series cover some aspect of the long war between Humanity and the Tahni species, which is a religious imperative from the Tahni side, mostly self-defense from the Human PoV. This series covers the first war in the sequence, from Contact through the first Tahni sneak attack, subsequent ebb and flow of interstellar war, to the truce that will put things on hold until it all breaks down in the next war. I really liked the variety of viewpoint characters, including a Navy Captain/Admiral with overall command of whatever system he is in; a fighter pilot (later CAG) for the down-n-dirty view of fighter actions; a Marine for boarding and ground actions; a cyborg Special Operator organizing resistance on occupied worlds; even some of the Tahni commanders (which is something new in this series). Although this Holy War series is my favorite of the bunch for reasons stated, I also like Partlow's other series: Recon, Drop Trooper, Glory Boy/Birthright, Duty Honor Planet, Enemies & Allies (different universe entirely).
8. Duchy of Terra series (The Terran Privateer et al) - Glynn Stewart. Good news: Terran scientists have developed a hyperdrive! Bad news: Under accepted Galactic Law, that opens us up for conquest by local powers! Turns out that the A!Tol Imperium is actually fairly benevolent and will protect us from slavers and genocidal fanatics, plus we manage to turn circumstances to become a semi-autonomous duchy rather than a system directly ruled by the Imperium. The series is primarily mil-SF and political intrigue, but I would love to run a Traveller campaign in this setting. Lots of room for merchants, diplomacy, exploration, military action as big as you want it (mercs, Duchy, Imperial), establishing colonies in the zone reserved for us or in unexplored space... very open.
Aww, I could go on at some length about the various SF series of Glynn Stewart (not even mentioning his fantasy stuff; he is very prolific). Two interesting things are that 1) most of his series make me want to play Traveller in their settings; and 2) from some of the rather specific words and phrases that he uses in his stories, I'm about 95% sure that Glynn Stewart is or has been a Traveller player himself. Anyway, onward!
9. Cherry Drop (also China Mike, Fresh Fruit and Ammo, Gnamma, and Honor Flight) - P.A. Piatt. This series details the military career of Abner Fortis, ISMC, from Ensign straight out of the Academy to honored Colonel, Commandant of the Corps, beloved by his men.
10. Marko Kloos - Palladium series, Frontlines series, Lucky Thirteen. Just because he appears as #10 means nothing. Somebody had to be #10. Marko Kloos is just as good as any of the people and books I've already listed. His Frontlines series is mostly mil-SF, but pretty good. His protagonist starts out a grunt but becomes a combat controller (think forward observer on steroids). The Palladium series is another that starts after a major war has ended, and examines the effects of post-war life on various people. Yeah, I'd like to play Traveller there...
Well, I was gonna limit myself to just 10, but I really can't stop without at least name-dropping a couple more authors that I think at least influence my ideas for things I could possibly do with Traveller going forward ...
L.L. Richman (Biowar series)
Andrew Moriarty (TransGalactic Insurance, Orbital Claims Adjustor, A Corporate Coup) great hard-SF Traveller-ish stuff!
Jamie McFarlane (Privateer Tales)
I just have to mention one more series from Glynn Stewart. This is the setting that I am working up to put my next Traveller campaign in.
Peacekeepers of Sol (Raven's Peace, Peacekeeper Initiative, Raven's Course, Drifter's Folly) by Glynn Stewart. In this series, the setting is the post-war remains of a huge interstellar empire. The Yinmari Empire had enslaved every species it discovered, then relocated them into clusters of factory worlds, with each cluster supported by a dedicated agricultural world which has no manufacturing facilities, so that none of the slave worlds are independently sustainable. There had been ongoing low-level rebellion and some outright revolts for centuries, with no real hope of success. Then the Yinmari captured an outlying colony of the United Planets Alliance, the unified human government based out of Earth. Oops. Big mistake!
The centuries-old rebellion exploded into war, with the UPA not only sending its own fleets but also supporting the various rebel factions. Still, it was a BIG empire, and it took 17 years of war to decisively beat them. Then the beaten remnants of the Yinmari loaded up their starships (ALL of their starships!) and withdrew to their core systems in complete isolation. Big Problem: without starships, that factory/agworld cluster setup is completely unsustainable. The Yinmari had abandoned the slaves on their whole empire full of factory worlds to starve to death, and those on the ag worlds to regress to barbarism without technology.
Of the surviving rebel factions, some want to establish stable alliances to keep the food flowing and fight piracy. Others want to become conquerors themselves, using their military power to build new empires. Weaker forces are simply turning pirate/viking. Then the retreated Yinmari play one more card: they switch off their subspace instantaneous interstellar communication system, which everybody had been using while simply assuming it to be a natural phenomenon. Suddenly, without warning, the fastest communication between star systems becomes a message carried by a ship - and that really throws a wrench into all the negotiations for peaceful recovery plans for the slave worlds that cannot sustain themselves.
The UPA cannot even try to save the whole former empire by itself - and there is naturally an isolationist faction that wants to "just forget all those aliens," and focus UPA expansion in other directions - but it forms the Solar Peacekeeping Initiative to scout the sectors nearest to UPA space, seeking to work out trade and non-aggression agreements, work out supply arrangements for those unsustainable clusters, encourage peaceful alliances and discourage conquest and the formation of mini-empires, and eliminate any pirates they see. Now, does that sound like an awesome Traveller campaign setting or not? (I started to write more about the planned campaign, but then realized that would be off-topic for this thread, which is about books. Oh, if only we still had our Travelog blogs for Moot subscribers!)
Peacekeepers of Sol (Raven's Peace, Peacekeeper Initiative, Raven's Course, Drifter's Folly) by Glynn Stewart. In this series, the setting is the post-war remains of a huge interstellar empire. The Yinmari Empire had enslaved every species it discovered, then relocated them into clusters of factory worlds, with each cluster supported by a dedicated agricultural world which has no manufacturing facilities, so that none of the slave worlds are independently sustainable. There had been ongoing low-level rebellion and some outright revolts for centuries, with no real hope of success. Then the Yinmari captured an outlying colony of the United Planets Alliance, the unified human government based out of Earth. Oops. Big mistake!
The centuries-old rebellion exploded into war, with the UPA not only sending its own fleets but also supporting the various rebel factions. Still, it was a BIG empire, and it took 17 years of war to decisively beat them. Then the beaten remnants of the Yinmari loaded up their starships (ALL of their starships!) and withdrew to their core systems in complete isolation. Big Problem: without starships, that factory/agworld cluster setup is completely unsustainable. The Yinmari had abandoned the slaves on their whole empire full of factory worlds to starve to death, and those on the ag worlds to regress to barbarism without technology.
Of the surviving rebel factions, some want to establish stable alliances to keep the food flowing and fight piracy. Others want to become conquerors themselves, using their military power to build new empires. Weaker forces are simply turning pirate/viking. Then the retreated Yinmari play one more card: they switch off their subspace instantaneous interstellar communication system, which everybody had been using while simply assuming it to be a natural phenomenon. Suddenly, without warning, the fastest communication between star systems becomes a message carried by a ship - and that really throws a wrench into all the negotiations for peaceful recovery plans for the slave worlds that cannot sustain themselves.
The UPA cannot even try to save the whole former empire by itself - and there is naturally an isolationist faction that wants to "just forget all those aliens," and focus UPA expansion in other directions - but it forms the Solar Peacekeeping Initiative to scout the sectors nearest to UPA space, seeking to work out trade and non-aggression agreements, work out supply arrangements for those unsustainable clusters, encourage peaceful alliances and discourage conquest and the formation of mini-empires, and eliminate any pirates they see. Now, does that sound like an awesome Traveller campaign setting or not? (I started to write more about the planned campaign, but then realized that would be off-topic for this thread, which is about books. Oh, if only we still had our Travelog blogs for Moot subscribers!)
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