Here are 8 books that The Disco Space Opera fans have personally recommended once you finish the The Disco Space Opera series.
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In 1966, I traveled to brave new worlds with the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Star Trek immediately became my lodestone, the focal point of my ten-year-old self, and I never missed an episode. A few years later I found Dune, and my love for the SF genre was cemented. I freely admit that I am not a hard science writer. I like to have fun with my stories, to play with ideas. I write first to entertain myself, and hopefully a reader or two along the way. I am a philosopher, a reader, and a writer.
The second book in Bear’s White Space series, Machine is an entertaining blend of SF adventure and multiple mysteries that sucked me right in. A space hospital begins to experience escalating mishaps after a rescue mission returns with the cryo-suspended crew of a stranded generation ship along with its memory-challenged ship’s mind.
Trust is a key theme in Machine, and you can trust Bear’s capable writer hands to tell a whopping good story.
She hasn't had a decent cup of coffee in fifteen years.
The first part of her job involves jumping out of perfectly good space-ships. The second part requires developing emergency treatments for sick aliens of species she's never seen before.
She loves it.
But her latest emergency is also proving a mystery:
Two ships, one ancient and one new, locked in a dangerous embrace. A mysterious crew suffering from an even more mysterious ailment. A shipmind trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away. A murderous virus from out of time.
In 1966, I traveled to brave new worlds with the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Star Trek immediately became my lodestone, the focal point of my ten-year-old self, and I never missed an episode. A few years later I found Dune, and my love for the SF genre was cemented. I freely admit that I am not a hard science writer. I like to have fun with my stories, to play with ideas. I write first to entertain myself, and hopefully a reader or two along the way. I am a philosopher, a reader, and a writer.
Take the concept of diving on shipwrecks and move it into space, then add a mystery and a whole lot of adventure, and you have Rusch’s awesome Diving series.
The Renegat is the 10th book in the series and the most ambitious one yet. Rusch is a master of character and world-building and it shines here. I can’t recommend this series enough.
As a young recruit, brilliant engineer Nadim Crowe accidentally destroys an entire Scrapheap full of ships. Now, decades later, he ends up on the crew of the Renegat, the only ship in the Fleet ever sent on a mission backwards to investigate an ancient Scrapheap.
Something invaded that Scrapheap and the Fleet wants to know what. Or who.
The Renegat: The only ship the Fleet dares risk. The Renegat: A ship of misfits and screw-ups sent on an impossible mission. All alone in deep space.
After more than 20 years of community work and activism in LGBTQ+ spaces, I couldn’t help but turn these experiences into a novel in which Berlin becomes the world’s first gay state – Proud Pink Sky,released March 14 from Amble Press. My essays and short stories focus on the strange, the queer, and the speculative, and have been published in The Sun Magazine, Guernica, Strange Horizons, PinkNews,andNature Futures,while my campaign work for LGBTQ+ and polyamory rights has been referenced in The Mirror, Buzzfeed, and BBC News. I am also nonbinary queer, have a Ph.D. in Literature, and currently live in Berlin.
Presenting one of the darkest futures I’ve ever read, The Offsetplunges us into a neo-medieval world ravaged by climate destruction. The debut novel of writing duo Natasha C. Calder and Emma Szewczak, The Offsetis set in a sinister, depopulated London which murders people for reproducing, yet it also weaves in a strange social acceptance. As with Becky Chambers’sA Psalm for the Wild-Built,queer and nonbinary people are completely and unquestioningly accepted – yet though the latter takes place in a quiet utopia, while here we’re dealing with a dramatic dystopia. This tolerance adds depth and nuance to an otherwise bleak setting, and it’s not just relegated to the background: The central protagonists form a queer family, one threatened by the omnipresent cruelties of a decaying future.
The world is dying and over populated. Professor Jac Boltanski is leading Project Salix, a ground-breaking new mission to save the world by replanting radioactive Greenland with genetically-modified willow trees. But things aren't working out and there are discrepancies in the data. Has someone intervened to sabotage her life's work?
In the meantime, her daughter Miri, an anti-natalist, has run away from home. Days before their Offset ceremony where one of her mothers must be sentenced to death, she is brought back against her will following a run-in with the law. Which parent will Miri pick to die: the one…
After more than 20 years of community work and activism in LGBTQ+ spaces, I couldn’t help but turn these experiences into a novel in which Berlin becomes the world’s first gay state – Proud Pink Sky,released March 14 from Amble Press. My essays and short stories focus on the strange, the queer, and the speculative, and have been published in The Sun Magazine, Guernica, Strange Horizons, PinkNews,andNature Futures,while my campaign work for LGBTQ+ and polyamory rights has been referenced in The Mirror, Buzzfeed, and BBC News. I am also nonbinary queer, have a Ph.D. in Literature, and currently live in Berlin.
Melissa Scott takes worldbuilding to fascinating extremes in her 1995 novel, Shadow Man. Due to changes in human biology, there are five recognised sexes in Scott’s far-flung society, with man and woman joined by fem, herm, and mem – yet despite the variety in body types, the isolated and backward planet of Hara forces its residents to choose between a simple binary. With its bold depictions of gender discrimination and violence, Shadow Manis relevant to our own social battles while also indulging in a fast-paced plot and thought-provoking speculation, all while being just different enough from our own world that it scratches that escapist itch.
In the far future, human culture has developed five distinctive genders due to the effects of a drug easing sickness from faster-than-light travel. But on the planet Hara, where society is increasingly instability, caught between hard-liner traditions and the realities of life, only male and female genders are legal, and the "odd-bodied" population are forced to pass as one or the other. Warreven Stiller, a lawyer and an intersexed person, is an advocate for those who have violated Haran taboos. When Hara regains contact with the Concord worlds, Warreven finds a larger role in breaking the long-standing role society has…
I became hooked into science fiction as a kid the day I read an illustrated book of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. From then on, science fiction became an important part of my reading repertoire. Having wide-ranging interests, I enjoy military techno-thrillers, Anglo-French naval warfare, Greek/Egyptian/Roman mythology, most sciences, history of religions, with an occasional novel that strays from the norm and adds a sparkle to my reading. Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills are very close to my heart. Just shows that I’m different. After all, I must do something when I am not writing my own novels! Although I have an extensive library of modern science fiction works, I am fond of many oldies.
Set in man’s far future and vast in scope, I was plunged into this novel without managing to catch my breath. This is science fiction that epitomizes the best in the genre: a powerful story, strong characters, vast vision, and lots of drama.
It is a hard book to put down, and I did not want to! I enjoyed the intricate tapestry the story weaves and, importantly, entertains. The interaction between the main characters is vividly real, as are genuine emotions vented when it is revealed an alien species manipulated man’s development. I would be kind of sore at that as well. This novel left me appreciating powerful writing and gave me a lot to think about, influencing my own writing.
Pierson's puppeteers, strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens, have discovered an immense structure in a hitherto unexplored part of the universe. Frightened of meeting the builders of such a structure, the puppeteers set about assembling a team consisting of two humans, a puppeteer and a kzin, an alien not unlike an eight-foot-tall, red-furred cat, to explore it. The artefact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its centre - the Ringworld. But the expedition goes disastrously wrong when the ship crashlands and its motley crew faces a trek across thousands of miles of…
I used to love dystopian books, but recently, I’ve become increasingly interested in hopeful narratives. I’ve been a climate activist in a couple of movements, and I care deeply about the world, but with all the challenges and negativity we are facing, it’s easy to fall into despair. That’s why I think stories that show cooperation, community, respect for nature and each other, working for a better world, and making it happen are so important. We need those stories to get inspired to act instead of thinking that we’re all doomed anyway. They are also healing—a refuge for a tormented mind.
This is such a beautiful, gentle and cozy book that I couldn’t put it down. In this story, people were left with no choice but to completely rebuild their society, and they did something wonderful.
This book is like a breath of fresh air, like a quiet, healing journey that doesn’t rely on action—it’s an exploration, a celebration of nature, and society, and connection. It touched me in a profound way. It made me go outside to check if it was raining and stand with my bare feet in the grass, enjoying the coldness and softness of the sensation.
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honour the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of 'what do people need?' is answered.
But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot.
I’m drawn to science fiction that forces characters to confront the limits of their own understanding, especially when faced with someone labeled as an enemy. These are the stories that taught me how fragile judgment can be, and how costly it is to mistake difference for threat. I return again and again to books where communication across cultures, species, or systems is difficult, incomplete, and often arrives too late. What fascinates me most is not conflict itself, but the moral effort required to truly see the other. These novels shaped how I think about empathy, memory, and responsibility, and they continue to influence the kinds of stories I write.
Reading this book reminded me that understanding another person is a continuous struggle, and that we lose the most when we mistake appearances for truth. Even for someone like Genly, an emissary whose role is to bridge cultures, truly understanding Estraven proves painfully difficult.
What stayed with me was the tragedy of that gap: how insight often arrives too late.
Estraven’s sacrifice, made so that Genly could reach safety, and Genly’s decision to visit Estraven’s family afterward, left me with a lingering sense that remembrance itself carries moral weight. Sometimes understanding cannot undo loss, but memory—how the living choose to carry it—can still salvage a trace of good from tragedy.
Le Guin’s novel taught me that empathy is not a destination, but an act that must be fought for, again and again.
50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION-WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking work of science fiction-winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants' gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...
Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an…
I was sick as a child and bedridden for several months. This was before 24/7 TV and computers. I began to read A LOT. I read everything and anything that I could find, but my favorite topics were animals and nature. I also read science fiction and fantasy. It’s not a surprise that those topics merged into my writing and life. I currently live on five acres that I’ve left mostly for the wildlife. My nephew calls me his aunt who lives in the forest with reindeer. That is way cooler than my real life, so I’m good with that. All my books have nature and friendship as main themes.
This entire series was amazing. Okay, a few of the books were a bit slow, but overall, it was great. The new worlds, the political intrigue, everything about this story was great. There were histories that drove the characters that were only hinted at or mentioned in passing, but they brought life to them. Just like we are all shaped by our past, our countries, and our places in society, so are all the characters in this book.
My favorite character wasn’t Paul, though; it was Duncan Idaho. I was so sad when he was killed, but I was fascinated when they brought him back from the dead in the second book and others because Herbert made it so interesting. The bodyguard programmed, created even, to kill the one he once died to protect. Now, that’s some drama right there. 😊
The twists, turns, and world-building were amazing. I learned…
Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.
Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.
