March 26th, 2008
Last summer at the Launch Pad workshop, I brougt in my main reference bookshelf for writing space-based hard science fiction. This list is by no means complete (I have books stashed everywhere and loaned out and whatever…who knows where they all end up?) . Here are the results:
Bennett, Jeffrey O., and G. Seth Shostak. Life in the Universe. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Pearson Addison Wesley, 2007.
Berry, Adrian. The Giant Leap : Mankind Heads for the Stars. London: Headline, 1999.
Bova, Ben, and Tony Lewis. Space Travel. 1st ed, Science Fiction Writing Series. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1997.
Darling, David J. Life Everywhere : The Maverick Science of Astrobiology. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Drake, Frank D., and Dava Sobel. Is Anyone out There? : The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, 1992.
Gillett, Stephen Lee, and Ben Bova. World-Building, Science Fiction Writing Series. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books, 1996.
Grady, M. M. Astrobiology. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001.
Grinspoon, David. Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life. Ecco, 2003.
Harrison, Albert A. Spacefaring : The Human Dimension. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Kaler, James B. Extreme Stars : At the Edge of Creation. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Kondo, Yoji. Interstellar Travel and Multi-Generation Space Ships. Burlington, Ont.: Apogee Books, 2003.
Lewis, John S. Mining the Sky : Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1996.
Lunine, Jonathan Irving. Astrobiology : A Multidisciplinary Approach. San Franciso: Pearson Addison Wesley, 2005.
Macvey, John W. Interstellar Travel : Past, Present, and Future. 1st Scarborough House trade pbk. ed. Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1991.
Mallove, Eugene F., and Gregory L. Matloff. The Starflight Handbook : A Pioneer’s Guide to Interstellar Travel, Wiley Science Editions. New York: Wiley, 1989.
Mullane, R. Mike. Do Your Ears Pop In Space and 500 Other Surprising Questions About Space Travel. Wiley, 1997.
Savage, Marshall T. The Millennial Project : Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.
Stine, G. Harry. Living in Space : A Handbook for Work & Exploration Beyond the Earth’s Atmosphere. 1st ed. New York: M. Evans and Co., 1997.
Tribble, Alan C. The Space Environment : Implications for Spacecraft Design. Rev. and expanded ed. Princeton, N.J. ; Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Walter, William J. Space Age. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 1992.
Woodmansee, Laura S. Sex in Space. Burlington, Ont., Canada: CG Publishing, Inc., 2006.
There are a lot more great books out there, but this is a big chunk of one of my bookshelves.
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Bova, Ben, and Tony Lewis. Space Travel. 1st ed, […]
Really?
I’d recommend something like http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html
or at least something with equations (Pournelle had a great two parter on this back in the 1970s but he’s never reprinted it).
For people who don’t want to do the math, I’d recommend jaqar’s swing-by calculator.
I’d recommend Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience, edited by Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones, published in 1985 as the writeup of a conference of how human experiences on earth might translate into space.
Yeah, Space Travel isn’t the best, but it’s on my shelf anyway. For rockets/orbits, I can grab my physics textbooks. The Spaceflight Handbook came in handy when I needed the relativistic rocket equation, which isn’t found in very many places and wasn’t trivial for me to derive.
Thanks for the suggestion, Martin. I don’t know that particular book but it sounds interesting. Not that many books treat people in space. Usually they’re more nuts and bolts.
Maybe I’ll work on this list in the future and created an annotated bibliography as a more general resource.
Dang.
A friend sent me the link to this item. Actually, it was Winchell Chung, the man behind the Project Rho/Atomic Rocket site mentioned above.
Now that I see your list (I have probably a 50% match in titles, and the other 50% I have titles that are similar in subject, but not a match in book) I find that I’m going to have to pick up some of your books!
The wallet cringes…
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Thanks for these links!
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