Please bookmark this permalink, because this entry should see considerable changes before the next meeting, as we whittle down the candidates to a shortlist of decent length.
Beginning with John Rennie's suggestion, The Companions, by Sheri S Tepper:
http://www.harpercollins.com/books/The-Companions-Sheri-S-Tepper/?isbn=9780061976322
And now, some other titles:-
Farmer in the Sky - Heinlein
Tunnel in the Sky - Heinlein
Mars series (Red Mars) - Robinson
The Deathworld trilogy - Harrison
Moving Mars - Bear
Mirabile - Kagan
Genesis Quest & Second Genesis - Moffet
Hainish Cycle (Rocannon's World) - LeGuin
The Legacy of Heorot - Niven
Destiny's Road - Niven
Helliconia trilogy - Aldiss
Mission of Gravity - Clement
40,000 in Gehenna by CJ Cherryh,
Ammonite by Nicola Griffiths
The Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter F Hamilton, starting with The Reality Dysfunction.
Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population.
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge *might* classify.
Some of Alastair Reynolds's novels might work, particularly Pushing Ice which is great for both its first contact and space exploration themes.
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Expect this list to change considerably, so keep the permalink bookmarked.
on the facebook page I had suggested Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space. I already have that on my shelf. I hope it is better than Pushing Ice: a great premise but terribly cliched characters and obvious plot moves once into it.
ReplyDeleteLet's see if the comments are working now ...
ReplyDeleteHow about Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (read red mars first if you can.)
ReplyDeletealso Serpents reach by C.J.Cherryh
I guess it depends on what you mean by "colonisation". I took it mean "the process of colonising a planet" so Farmer in the Sky counts because it's about the process of colonising Ganymede. The Helliconia trilogy doesn't because while it's about a colony it's not really about colonisation. Likewise Mission of Gravity is really "exploration" rather than "colonisation".
ReplyDeleteFarmer in the Sky is a good read, but it's all fairly straightforward. What interests me is when the colonists find something bizarre and totally unexpected, or there's some other unusual feature e.g. The Songs of Distant Earth is about mass colonisation of an established but small colony by people fleeing a doomed earth.
Is the Night's Dawn trilogy even remotely connected to colonisation? They're good books and I enjoyed reading them (though they're bloody long, and the ending is the most literal deus ex machina I've ever read) but they don't have anything to do with colonisation.