New to site: Looking for space opera onboard spaceship

[Espen]

Hi Everyone. Thank you all for being part of this community, and for all the wonderful help I have already gotten from these forums. You are all very nice people, who have helped me a lot exploring my very recent introduction to sci-fi books.

I am looking for something specific. I would love to ask you all if there are any Space Operas that exclusively deals with travel trough space, and the onboard relationship on a spaceship. Think Space Battleship Yamato or off course Star Trek. Romance, adventure and new worlds, everything I think many of us describe a space opera as.

These books can be classics or recent, I don't really mind. I would also love them to have audiobook versions of the same book.

[Trike]

The Tour of the Merrimack series mostly takes place onboard the spaceship Merrimack. The Myriad is the first in the series.

Marrow by Robert Reed and Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke are not exactly space opera, but they take place onboard mysterious spacescraft. As does Greg Bear's Eon. See also Hull Zero Three and Tau Zero.

Oh, The Wreck of The River of Stars by Michael Flynn. I thought it was okay.

There are tons of books that take place on Generation Ships. If that sort of thing interests you, that's a deep hole you can go down.

[Tobias]

I recently read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, which I think fits your description very well.

[Betsy]

You might enjoy the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Series (also called Trader Tales) by Nathan Lowell. I don't usually think of it as space opera because it has none of the heroic, military action aspects that usually apply. But it's all about relationships, as the crew of the commercial trading vessels travel about the cosmos. And the main character, Ismael Horatio Wang, is one of my favorite characters ever. I highly recommend the series. They don't have standard audio versions, but you can get the author's podcast versions for free from Podiobooks.

[Trike]

Tobias wrote: "I recently read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, which I think fits your description very well."

D'oh! How did I forget that? Yes, definitely.

[Francis]

You may like Voyage to Alpha Centauri by Michael O'Brien it was excellent. It involves a lot of real life scenarios and situations while onbaord a space ship. I hope you enjoy.

[Buzz H.]

Espen wrote: "Hi Everyone. Thank you all for being part of this community, and for all the wonderful help I have already gotten from these forums. You are all very nice people, who have helped me a lot exploring..."

I'd recommend Rimrunners and Merchanter's Luck by C.J. Cherryh. Both take place on starships and space stations.

[M Alan]

Like several others here I also enjoyed Becky Chambers The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Unusually for a lot of science fiction, it deals very strongly with the human (alien, AI, whatever, it's all the same!) aspect, so you really get to love the characters, so much so that u feel disappointed when the story ends because you want to continue adventuring with these characters. Some parts were a bit drawn out I thought, but on the whole it moved along well. The only shortcoming is that the science is basically non existent, what I would call artistic license scifi as opposed to hard SF.

Another story set on board a ship, similar theme, but more of an action-adventure style, is J.S. Morin's Salvage Trouble which is a novella and part of an ongoing series. In ambience it is very similar to Firefly (but thankfully without the cowboys and horses) and fulfils all the classic space opera tropes.

A very popular series is James A A Corey the Expanse, beginning with Leviathan Wakes, which has recently been made into a TV series. Most of the action takes place on a spaceship. I myself didn't like Leviathan Wakes as much as the other two books because I found the main protagonist Jim Holden to be too overpowered and central to the story. I prefer that all the characters are a team of equals

[Jennifer]

I just read Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds, which has some interesting concepts and might fit your needs. It's a shorter book.

[MadProfessah]

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson should fit this as well.

Most of the story takes place on the ship.

The Ark by Peter Tomlinson takes place on a generation ship (murder mystery thriller scifi hybrid).

[V.W.]

A classic if you can find it:

The Voyage of the Space Beagle

The Dahak series:

Mutineers' Moon

The Stars At War Series

The Stars at War

The Wing Commander series

Freedom Flight

[Jemima]

Do Anne McCaffrey's Brain Ships count? The story is the spaceship... try The Ship Who Sang for starters.
Maybe it's not space opera...

[Anna]

It's classified as Young Adult, but Across the Universe by Beth Revis is a worldship space opera story.

[Deb]

I just finished re-reading the first two of the Valor series by Tanya Huff, that might qualify. I reviewed here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Laz]

Deborah wrote: "I just finished re-reading the first two of the Valor series by Tanya Huff, that might qualify.

Absolutely! Good stuff.

[Alex V]

I also recommend the Rendezvous with Rama mentioned by @Trike. It was a completely surreal and difficult to understand world as an alien world should be, and that these ships would be worlds in their own. Almost like a synthetic planet with independent motion. The way it is written is unique and daring for that time. I remember that crab creature inside the ship till this day :P

(and BTW how do you mention people from the thread? by using the '@' symbol in front of the username you read?)

[Betsy]

Alex V wrote: " BTW how do you mention people from the thread? by using the '@' symbol in front of the username you read?"

Goodreads doesn't have a device for that. You can reply to a specific post by clicking the "reply" link at the bottom right of the post, and it will copy the poster's name and the first part of the text into your reply message. Just as I did with this (although I changed the text that was quoted).

[Dave]

Yes what Betsy said above, Nathan Lowell's Golden Age of the Solar Clipper books are superb. print or audio.