Lit Other books/series similar to Star Wars EU

this might be slightly off-topic for this forum, but I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of Sci-Fi/Adventure kind of literature that is similar to Star Wars EU?

I've read every Star Wars novel between 2 and 6 times (not joking) and was just looking to see what else was out there (especially with new Star Wars novels looking like becoming a rarity).

I've read a few Halo books and really like them. Is there anything else out there?

 

Star Trek now has a fairly large EU.

Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series is in a fairly similar "Space opera" style.

 

I love Simon Green and Deathstalker is Star Wars turned up to 11.

 

Read any SW comics? You mentioned novels in your post; if you haven't read any comics then there's a much larger EU awaiting you.

Star Wars's own Jason Fry recently wrote the first novel of a new young adult sci-fi series called The Jupiter Pirates. It's a quick and very entertaining read that promises some great sequels. Check it out on Amazon here.

SW authors James Luceno and Brian Daley wrote a whole whack of Robotech novels back in the eighties and early nineties. Luceno's role in overseeing them is what got him hired in SW in the first place. I haven't read them but it seems like a pretty expansive universe.

 

Asimov's Foundation series was awesome when I first discovered it; it captured exactly what I like about Star Wars. (Or rather, SW took a certain feel from it - it was one of the influences on SW.)

Though I haven't read the Dune or Lensman series, both of those were also influences on SW. Perhaps they might appeal to you.

 

If you are a space battle fan you might want to check out the Warhammer 40K books. I'm a big fan of these. The ongoing Horus Heresy series should be read in order as each book builds on past events/characters. I got my start in the books with Dan Abbnett's Eisenhorn trilogy.

 

Thanks a lot for all the ideas, I will have to bookmark this page and see what I can find. everything of James Luceno's I've read so far has been brilliant and I'll definitely look into the Warhammer 40K I think I've seen them around before. Not a huge fan of Star trek though, except for the recent films.

 

Luceno recently self-published a lot of his older, non-SW stuff as eBooks. I don't think that includes Robotech, but those books seem to be available for eBook readers anyway. The Big Empty is a good, AI-heavy hard sci-fi work of Luceno's, and Headhunters is not sci-fi but you'll enjoy it if you like Luceno's prose and travel-themed literature. I'm hoping to read some more of his early stuff soon.

 

Mageworlds.

 

You'll definitely want to give James Corey's Leviathan Wakes a try. They actually wrote a Star Wars novel recently, and while I haven't yet read it, it looks like it didn't disappoint.

Also, if you're looking to try the grand daddy of Star Wars, and just want great science fiction, you need to read Dune. It also helps that, like in Star Wars, you'll want to avoid Kevin J Anderson like the plague.

 

Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghost books are an excellent entry point, as are the Horus Heresy books, although those are up to a 25 novel series at this point...but they do set the lore up.

 

Now i wasn't much of a Gaunt's Ghost fan -- I read a few and kinda lost interest. I prefer the Space Marines and the Inquisitor storylines. I also liked Priests of Mars and I'm waiting for the next one, Lords of Mars to hit paper. I'm currently reading The Unremembered Empire, the latest in the Horus Heresy series.

 

I usually use Gaunt's as my go to recommendation because it doesn't dump you headfirst into the lore but at the same time gives you a pretty good overview of what the universe is like. The later books bring in space marines, chaos demons and marines, and eldar, and for the most part do it in ways that doesn't require an advance degree in WH40K to understand.

Some people might find the Imperial Guard a little easier to relate to as well, but you're right in that the space marines are the bread and butter of the WH40K verse and what brings most people to the books.

 

They are also the only part of the Imperiums forces that or not so in love with themselves that they are actually interesting to follow.


Hmm... Sci-Fi book recommendations...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_Harrington

 

I used to read the Honor Harrington books but I went off them a few years ago. I just lost track of storylines and didn't want to do a re-read. I did want a treecat though.

 

Timothy Zahn wrote a trilogy, after the Thrawn Trilogy, set in an original universe called the Conquerors' Trilogy.

Out of curiosity, which Halo books did you read? I have only read Halo: Evolutions and am looking forward to the first six books, especially the three by Eric Nylund.

 

Pretty sure I've read a few of those - maybe the first 3 or 4. I know I have one in the reading pile as well but it's probably a couple of years old.

 

Robert E. Howard's Hyborean Age. It's not as SF as Star Wars, though there's stories with those elements (The Tower of the Elephant), and it may become more prominent in non-Howard penned stories (specifically thinking of The Crawler in the Mists).

 

I think I read a couple of the Conan books. Haven't read any of the comics. It's been awhile though.

 

The only Timothy Zahn book I've read outside of Star Wars was a science fiction/noir detective novel called "The Icarus Hunt." It was a wicked long time ago, but I remember quite liking it. It was stand-alone, I think, so there's not an entire universe of novels, but you know, if you're ever finding yourself between franchises and wanting something to read...

 

Peter F Hamilton is fun: Night's Dawn Trilogy, Confederation Saga, Void Trilogy.

Neal Asher's Polity books are a blast.

Iain M Banks' Culture stories are always worth a look, but I don't recommend his final one - do love the Culture minds.

Weber's Honorverse is very good indeed, definitely worth a look.

Trek from 1999/2000 onwards will surprise you with its consistency and there's some great little lines in there - I recommend the Vanguard, Gorkon and Lost Era books particularly.

 

If you're talking about a TV/movie series with an immense & cohesive secondary universe, the old Star Wars EU was fairly unique in its day. Marvel has a up-ended version, considering the comics were first. Star Trek has been developing a pseudo-EU, but it seems more of the writers taking advantage of a "no plans currently to revisit the original ST universe" situation - I suppose it depends how long that lasts, although there's also the backlog of decades of material that is just your regular tie-in fodder. It isn't exactly on the level of the old SW stuff yet - we had three separate ST products come out at the same time that couldn't coordinate a single vision for the Romulan War.
Similarly, the old Doctor Who books from Virgin Publishing in the 90s had an amazing built-up universe, with not only new Seventh Doctor stories following the (then) end of the TV series, but also "missing adventures" of the various other incarnations. They've been ignored by the new series, except in cases where (shades of CWAS) a novel is cannibalized for a TV episode (not that it was bad episode by any means); but it did have a good decade or so of a run before BBC Books yanked the license.
If you're just talking series, most of the ones I'd recommend are already covered, although I'd throw in the Sprawl Trilogy by William Gibson (really three novels and three short stories) and Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Oh, and I have read the Dune series - highly recommend them, although I'd stay away from the KJA ones and stick with the original Frank Herbert... and, if you can find a copy, the excellent and forever out-of-print Dune Encyclopedia. I would also mention that Asimov's Foundation series is set within an overarching "humanity's future" universe, which includes novels set from an alternate now to the early days of the Galactic Empire that starts to fall apart in the Foundation series.

 

Yeah, The Icarus Hunt is basically a Han and Chewie mystery-thriller with different names. Zahn has written several standalones, and has a couple novel series -- the Conquerors' Trilogy and his Cobra and Blackcollar series (and apparently he's been writing Cobra sequels recently . . .) -- plus I think some more YA series he's done recently. I haven't kept up with his output that much in the last decade, but I can recommend those standalones I've read, plus Conquerors' and the Cobra books, as feeling fairly close to the space opera of Star Wars.

Trying the other work of Star Wars authors you've enjoyed is generally a good way to start branching out. I'm not personally familiar with Michael Stackpole's Battletech novels, for example, but I understand they're fairly similar in concept to his X-wing novels, but tie into some tabletop game setting with big mecha instead of X-wings.

I guess the best advice would come with clarification: are you looking for stories that are Star Wars-like in general, big space opera, or are you looking for big sci-fi/fantasy universes that have the depth and ability to get deeply invested into a lot of lore and a big story that the EU as a whole has, or are you looking for work that feels like something in particular, like a specific set of books or author that you really dig?

 

I once told Grievous' backstory to a classmate and she said that it sounded like Ender's Game.
If you haven't read it you can probably find a copy at the library. The sequel (Speaker for the Dead) has some interesting aliens too. Can't say I like the author though.

The comic Saga has been compared to Star Wars. I haven't read it because the alien designs are even more "humans with things tacked on" than Star Wars.

 

It's not purely the abandonment of the "prime" timeline; the novels had been developing a tighter continuity from around the end of the 90s onward.

The important thing to keep in mind when it comes to the Star Trek "EU" is that there is not, and has never been, an effort to coordinate all of the supplementary products the way Star Wars has tried to. The main Pocket novel continuity includes a few comics, but has only an intermittent relationship with video games, most of the comics, and even some other books. I actually prefer it to the SW EU overall - it's generally better about keeping to the feel of the source material and tends to dodge the mistakes that the SW EU has tripped up on when they do similar things - but it's definitely more of a "menu" of additional fiction that you can pick and choose than it is the "single timeline" the SW EU has made its central feature.

(Not that I'm sure that's a bad thing...)