Mass Effect, Star Trek, similar stuff, without the giant franchise money machine. To consume like popcorn.
One of my favourites is Spiral Wars by Joel Sheppard.
Is Scalzi’s Red Shirts considered to be tied to a franchise? 😹
It’s a lot of fun regardless.
You also might try Bloom by Wil Mccarthy and Pushing Ice by Alistair Reynolds. They’re pretty much one offs that take place on ships, although definitely not in a Star Trek/Star Wars vein. And if you can stomach a generation ship, there’s Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson.
I’m feeling a little old school tonight so I’m going to boost Rimrunners by C.J. Cherryh. May say #3 in a series, but all the books stand alone (they just share the same universe).
Is it part of Alliance-Union? I’ve read a couple of hers and always enjoyed them, but they never felt ship-and-crew. Rimrunners, you say (… heads to Wikipedia… )
Very, very late to the party but ship and crew ones she’s written in the A-U universe are Rimrunners, Tripoint and Merchanter’s Luck. Heavy Time almost falls into the category too but it takes place mostly on-station after a mining expedition gone wrong with a little bit of flashback to ship and crew.
Yeah, most Cherryh is not ship-and-crew in the sense you are talking about (though I loved the duct-tape feel of the ships in Heavy Time, iirc). Rimrunners might be the closest to what you are looking for though. And yep, it is Union-Alliance. For Cherryh, I guess maybe The Pride of Chanur would be ship-and-crew adventure? I can’t quite remember as it was long, long, long ago I read that stuff – who knows how well its aged. It’s cover doesn’t look super compelling to me these days. So I’m not recommending it. Ha ha.
