SF Novels for Star Hero?

[Nyrath]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

I'm trying to focus on novels were the protagonist is the center of action, important for a good Star Hero campaign.

 

Northwest Smith by C.L. Moore. This is set in a science-fantasy where one can walk around on Venus and admire the willowy Venusian women, but it could be transplanted to an interstellar campaign. It centers around Northwest Smith, who is sort of a rougher hard-bitten version of Han Solo. The stories have a facinating moody gothic sort of feeling.

 

The Star Fox by Poul Anderson. Details the adventures of an interstellar privateer harrassing an enemy under authority of a letter of marque.

 

Passage At Arms by Glen Cook. A marvelous interstellar combat novel from the view of the crew. It reads like "Das Boot" in outer space. Great for getting the tone and feel of life in a combat starship.

 

The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook. Reads like "Dune" but with lots of space battles.

 

the Four Lords of the Diamond series by Jack Chalker. An interstellar secret agent has to infiltrate four "planets of no return". Planets that have some unexplained phenomenon that allow the inhabitants to practice something that resembles magic and sorcery. But there is some high-tech goodies as well.

 

Galactic Odyssey by Keith Laumer. The interstellar travels of a vagabond scooped up from Earth as he quests to rescue his lady love.

 

Dinosaur Beach by Keith Laumer. One of the best genre "time travel" novels ever written. Lots of sensawunda.

 

Sleeping Planet by William R. Burkett. Aliens use a biological warfare attack to put everyone on Earth to sleep in order to capture the planet. But several immune Earthmen put a severe monkey wrench into the invasion.

 

Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison. There are many books in the series but the first one is the best. An interstellar con man uses a variety of cool gadgets to commit is ingeneous robberies. So when the agents finally caught him, the only thing they could do was make him a agent.

 

The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz. On a pelagic planet, one young woman researcher has to use her knowledge of the planetary flora and fauna to thwart an alien invasion. Lots of cool deadly creatures.

 

the Flinx novels by Alan Dean Foster. The adventures of a high-Psionic young man and his miniature dragon. But even without the psionics the interstellar culture is facinating.

 

Space Cadet by Robert Heinlein. An archtypical science fantasy with the swamps of Venus, but it gives a great feel for the life of a Space Patrolman.

 

the Solar Queen series by Andre Norton. The definitive novels of the life and hard times of a tramp interstellar free-trader.

 

the Space Angel series by John Maddox Roberts. Another free-trader series almost as good as Nortons.

 

the Ross Murdock series by Andre Norton. Great time travel novels with American Agents sparing with Russian agents in an attempt to loot alien starships that crashed on Earth thousands of years ago.

 

the Murdoc Jern series by Andre Norton. The adventures of an interstellar jeweler caught up in a vast plot. Some action with the interstellar equivalent of the Mafia, some action on primitive alien planets.

 

the Central Control series by Andre Norton. One novel has the adventures of interstellar mercenaries from Earth, viewed as second class citizens by the rest of the galaxy. The other has a hauntingly beautiful novel about the last of the Star Rangers as the galactic empire falls.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

The Stainless Steel Rat is as much a great character as a setting. Jim Digriz is a master of rationalization, who really does believe he is helping socity by comitting crimes in a nearly crime-free world. why hire copes iof there are no criminals? Never mind that he regularly makes a fool out of eveyrone he encounters, even his boss. I will never forget the scene in the second novel where Jim goads Inskipp for his prudishness in being unable to use the word "pregnant" to describe Jim's wife.

[Nyrath]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

True, but on a more mundane level Hero System gadget makers will be all agog at Slippery Jim's goodies, like ring-drills, wrist sheaths full of smoke grenades, and the "gunfire simulator" (a sort of noisemaker that emits the sounds of a multi-person gunfight, when dropped in a smoke cloud it fools the cops into diving for cover)

[Guest Major Tom]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

I'm suprised no one's mention the Enderverse by Orson Scott Card

 

Ender's Game

Speaker for the Dead

Ender's Shadow

 

And there are some other's I'm forgetting...

 

I think one of the more recent books in the series is called Shadow of the Hegemon,

but I could be mistaken.

 

On a different note, some years ago I had the opportunity to read one of the novels

in the Skaith series (I forget which one it was, or for that matter, who wrote

them), and what struck me was how a basically medieval-type world was handled

in a universe where FTL travel was commonplace. What comes to mind right now,

though, is what a hybrid campaign setting it would make (Star Hero with a

touch of Fantasy Hero thrown in for good measure). I will do some checking

around, though, and see what I can dig up about the series.

 

Major Tom

[Brett]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

I believe the third book was Children of the Mind. I enjoyed Ender's Game' date=' made it through Speaker for the Dead and stopped reading the series at that point.[/quote']I was going to interject and say that I think the third book was Xenocide, and Children of the Mind was fourth. (It's been a while). Ender's Shadow (which was the last on that I read) tells the story of Bean which takes place in conjunction with Ender's Game.

 

Then I decided not to be lazy and went to the Orson Scott Card web page to find the exact order (of publication at least):

 

Ender's Game

Speaker for the Dead

Xenocide

Children of the Mind

Ender's Shadow

Shadow of the Hegemon

Shadow Puppets

 

 

 

Brett

[Spence]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

On a different note, some years ago I had the opportunity to read one of the novels

in the Skaith series (I forget which one it was, or for that matter, who wrote

them), and what struck me was how a basically medieval-type world was handled

in a universe where FTL travel was commonplace. What comes to mind right now,

though, is what a hybrid campaign setting it would make (Star Hero with a

touch of Fantasy Hero thrown in for good measure). I will do some checking

around, though, and see what I can dig up about the series.

 

Major Tom

 

Leigh Brackett wrote them.

 

Vol 1: The Ginger Star

Vol 2: The Hounds Of Skaith

Vol 3: The Reavers Of Skaith

 

Hard to findout of print books. But a great read if you can.

[Nyrath]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

Leigh Brackett wrote them.

 

Vol 1: The Ginger Star

Vol 2: The Hounds Of Skaith

Vol 3: The Reavers Of Skaith

 

Hard to findout of print books. But a great read if you can.

 

http://www.bookfinder.com/ is your friend.

[AlHazred]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Bolo series by Keith Laumer. Bolos are the progenitors of Steve Jackson's Ogres and inspired most other cybertanks you've read about. And anyone who thinks the tanks would overshadow the PCs need only read either Night of the Trolls (a short story novelized as The Stars Must Wait) or any of the spinoff stories written by various authors in the Bolos series of shared-world anthologies put out by Baen. (Specifically, look for S.M. Stirling's entries. They're pretty good; his protagonists could be a party of PCs.)

[shadowcat1313]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

IMHO one of the best of the Bolo stories is from the book called "The Old Guard"

 

the final story in the book is about a pair of Bolos that act like brothers

named Andrew and Hank...

 

it was written by William H Keith, whos written gaming stuff for traveller and battletech among other things for years

and is dedicated to his brother Andrew, who had passed away suddenly

 

its a personal favorite of mine

[Nyrath]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Bolo series by Keith Laumer. Bolos are the progenitors of Steve Jackson's Ogres and inspired most other cybertanks you've read about.

Modesty forbids.

[AlHazred]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

Modesty forbids.

I should mention that the interior artwork (not sure about the cover) of the classic OGRE was done by our own Nyrath.

 

Nyrath, you going to GenCon? I'll bring my OGRE stuff to be signed...

[Nyrath]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

I should mention that the interior artwork (not sure about the cover) of the classic OGRE was done by our own Nyrath.

 

Nyrath, you going to GenCon? I'll bring my OGRE stuff to be signed...

I did the cover of the original black-and-red version, but not the subsequent ones.

 

Alas, I won't be able to make GenCon.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

I really like the universe as described by Bujold in the Vor series, excellent socio-political structure to work with and nothing too far out in left field so far as tech goes.

 

The enderverse? That would be a boring game, though I'd love to see the continuous-uncontrolled-sticky-NND-megascale-AOE 20d6 RKA "Dr. Device" in action

[Intrope]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

Not exactly a novel[1], but: the anime Crest of the Stars/Banner of the Stars I & II form a very good Sci-Fi story. It has rather less rubber than many SF tales, too: while it has an FTL system, it's relatively well-defined; ships typically move with attitude thrusters (rather than like planes in air); no intelligent non-humans; very few elements aren't reasonable extrapolations of known-possible things.

 

That said, it sometimes feels somewhat slow-moving and the main focus isn't on the interstellar war that drives the story, but on the main characters Lafiel and Jinto. It has a somewhat heavy militaristic focus through much of it, but it looks like the next volume was headed away from that[2].

 

You could probably build a very good campaign in this setting, but very few places are all that well described; on the other hand, the story itself justifies filling in all sorts of different worlds. The biggest downside to the show (as far as gaming goes) is that only the Abh Empire (the focus of the show in many ways) is shown in any detail. The Abh's main enemy (the United Mankind) has very few details revealed in the show [we end up knowing more about their dietary laws than their system of government]. The other 3 interstellar governments are total ciphers.

 

[1] The anime was based of a japanese novel, but AFAIK no transalation exists into english.

[2] You can find a synopsis of Banner III on the internet, but AFAIK it hasn't been animated as yet (I haven't read any of these)

[Lightray]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

Vernor Vinge has some good ones: The Peace War + Marooned In Realtime (same setting) offer an interesting setting.

 

A Fire Upon The Deep has all kinds of possibilities, given that galactic civilization is practically falling apart in the novel. And there's so many aliens and technologies that any Hero write-up or power could be appropriate.

 

A Deepness In The Sky also has advanced technology and aliens, and its background is perfect for the Traveller-esque "traders who move from world to world" group.

 

Orson Scott Card also has a few other books that would make interesting Star Hero settings: Wyrms, with several alien "races" and an interesting backstory that also has political intrigue (which is only briefly mentioned in the story as part of the protagonist's background).

 

Treason, where every "nation" has its specialty, some of which are essentially super-powers. And there's lots of intrigue and war between the "nations".

[Vanguard00]

Re: SF Novels for Star Hero?

 

Bah! One half-hearted mention of Santiago by Mike Resnick?

 

Resnick's books (Santiago, Widowmaker, Oracle, Paradise, Purgatory, etc) are a great source of material for any sci-fi/space opera gamer and just a fun read, to boot. I can't recommend 'em enough.