Books like 'The Culture: Consider Phlebas/Player of Games/Use of Weapons'
Readers who enjoyed The Culture: Consider Phlebas/Player of Games/Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
sc-fi space hard sci-fi action / adventure space-opera drama
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Into the Serpent's Lair by Ryk Brown
12 ratingsEmpires at the brink of war…A galactic alliance on the horizon…Worlds on the verge of destruction…Comrades taking up arms against one another…Nathan Scott must use all his cunning to save not only his own world, but the worlds of his friends and his enemies. But to do so, he must make a deal with the devil, and risk everything on a fight no one believes he can win... -
Return of the Corinari by Ryk Brown
12 ratingsPart 2: Episode 13 A host of new allies… A plethora of advanced technologies… A daring gamble to advance their forces… A chance to retake lost worlds once and for all… The Dusahn have been backed into a corner, barely able to hold the worlds of the Pentaurus cluster, let alone the entire sector. Forced to dig in, they may have to resort to drastic measures to save their fledgling empire... -
The Neutronium Alchemist 1: Consolidation by Peter F. Hamilton
16 ratingsHumanity is in incredible peril. The minds of those long dead are taking over the bodies of the living, in increasingly alarming numbers. Joshua Calvert is desperately trying to recover a "doomsday weapon", an instrument that might blast the dead back into oblivion--but in the wrong hands, it could mean the end of the human race... -
The Naked God 1: Flight by Peter F. Hamilton
16 ratingsThis breathtaking climax to the acclaimed saga of "The Reality Dysfunction" and "The Neutronium Alchemist" finds the Confederation on the verge of collapse, as more and more star systems fall to the Possessed. An alien god may hold the solution to the crisis--if Joshua and Syrinx can discover it in time... -
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The Revelation Space Collection by Alastair Reynolds
8 ratingsContains seven fantastic novels: REVELATION SPACE, CHASM CITY, REDEMPTION ARK, ABSOLUTION GAP, THE PREFECT, DIAMOND DOGS & TURQUOISE DAYS and GALACTIC... -
The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die by Stephen R. Donaldson
19 ratingsFrom the bestselling author of Chaos and Order comes the conclusion of the Gap series. As the crew attempts to pursue the pirate ship Soar and her captain, their hopes turn to Angus Thermopyle. Angus, Morn Hyland, and her son, Davies, race home, unaware that Warden Dios and The Dragon are locked in a final confrontation that may alter the fate of humankind forever. HC: Bantam... -
Disc by Laurence E. Dahners
10 ratings“Disc” picks up right after Vaz and Tiona’s invention of an apparently reactionless drive in “Tiona.”Tiona and her brother Dante want to license the rights to the new thrusters to big aircraft and car companies, using the money from the licenses to develop a private space industry... -
The Middle of Nowhere by Mackey Chandler
10 ratingsApril returns home from her trip down to Earth unhappy with what she accomplished. Papa-san Santos is finishing her rescue of the Lieutenants, Her traitorous brother is dead, and so many things are uncertain.The Chinese and North Americans both continue to give her and Home a hard time. But April, Jeff, and Heather are gathering allies and power... -
A Depth of Understanding by Mackey Chandler
10 ratingsApril's nation Home has removed itself from orbiting close to Earth, but problems continue. Their enemies try to use the United Nations to act against them, as if that isn't a transparent subterfuge. The new Lunar nation of Central acts to help them, but at considerable cost... -
Peacemaker by C.J. Cherryh
12 ratingsAt last—Cajeiri has his young guests from the starship, three young folk entranced by weather and trees and creatures with minds of their own. It’s all he dreamed of.. -
Tiona by Laurence E. Dahners
12 ratings“Tiona” picks up six years after the end of Vaz. Tiona, Vaz’s daughter, is starting grad school in physics, has a “bad boy” musician boyfriend, and does her own strange variety of charity work at a homeless shelter.Her professor has her start work on a project to try to achieve high temperature superconduction by doping the graphene membranes her lab partner has figured out how to precipitate... -
Conspirator by C.J. Cherryh
14 ratingsFirst in a brand-new "Foreigner" trilogy from Hugo Award winning author C. J. Cherryh. Cajeiri is the young son of the powerful leader of the Western Association-and he has become a target for forces bent on destroying his father's rule. For Cajeiri is the first "ateva" youth to have lived in a human environment... -
Robots and Empire by Isaac Asimov
28 ratingsLong after his humiliating defeat at the hands of Earthman Elijah Baley, Keldon Amadiro embarked on a plan to destroy planet Earth. But even after his death, Baley's vision continued to guide his robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, who had the wisdom of a great man behind him and an indestructable will to win... -
The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov
32 ratingsA millennium into the future two advances have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together... -
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Slow Time Between the Stars by John Scalzi
20 ratingsAn artificial intelligence on a star-spanning mission explores the farthest horizons of human potential—and its own purpose—in a mind-bending short story by New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi.Equipped with the entirety of human knowledge, a sentient ship is launched on a last-ditch journey to find a new home for civilization. Trillions of miles. Tens of thousands of years... -
The Gangster by Scott Sigler
6 ratingsTHE GANGSTER is the sixth book in the Galactic Football League series.The ongoing mental battle between star quarterback Quentin Barnes and team owner Gredok the Splithead is coming to a head. Endless threats and the promise of ultraviolence hangs on their every word... -
Field of Dishonor by David Weber
28 ratingsHONOR BETRAYEDThe People's Republic of Haven's sneak attack on the Kingdom of Manticore has failed. The Peeps are in disarray, their leaders fighting for power in bloody revolution, and the Royal Manticoran Navy stands victorious.But Manticore has domestic problems of its own, and success can be more treacherous than defeat for Honor Harrington... -
The Complete Hammer's Slammers Volume 3 by David Drake
8 ratingsWith a veteran ’s eye for the harsh and gritty details of war, David Drake depicts a futuristic analog of Vietnam-era tank combat in his Hammer’s Slammers fiction. Upon this tactical foundation, Drake uses historical metaphor to provide a rich and detailed future-history that is both unique and strangely familiar...Categorized as:
space-opera action-adventure adult anthologies fiction hard-sci-fi military soldiers -
The Last Dancer by Daniel Keys Moran
8 ratingsThe Manhattan-based Unification government controls the earth, but rebellion brews in Occupied America as the American Revolution's tricentennial approaches... -
And What Goes Around by Mackey Chandler
8 ratingsThe nation of Home and their ally Central seems to have bought some safety by moving Mitsubishi 3 from Low Earth Orbit to a halo orbit around L2 beyond the moon. It has added expenses, but it has unexpected advantages too, when Earth has its own problems. A little extra distance works just fine... -
Unstable Prototypes by Joseph R. Lallo
10 ratingsFollowing his last adventure, Trevor "Lex" Alexander's life has managed to return to normal. He's back to splitting his time between delivering packages and transporting passengers, along with the occasional foray into testing highly experimental equipment... -
The Crew by Scott Sigler
10 ratingsIt is the best-kept and worst-kept secret in the Planetary Union navy. The PUV James Keeling, a warship that does things that no other ship can do. It is a weapon, and a liability. The rumor is that eighty percent of the people assigned to the Keeling die before their two-year stint is up... -
Jack Four by Neal Asher
12 ratingsCreated to die - determined to live . . .Jack Four - one of twenty human clones - has been created to be sold. His purchasers are the alien prador and they only want him for their experimentation program. But there is something different about Jack. No clone should possess the knowledge that's been loaded into his mind. And no normal citizen of humanity's Polity worlds would have this information... -
The Human by Neal Asher
14 ratingsA warship is laying waste to the galaxy, making for unexpected allies in the face of incredible acts of war. This is the high-octane conclusion to Neal Asher's Rise of the Jain trilogy.An entire galaxy hangs in the balance.A Jain warship has risen from the depths of space, emerging with a deadly grudge and a wealth of ancient yet lethal technology... -
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Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
41 ratingsAn all-time science fiction classic, Rendezvous with Rama is also one of Clarke's best novels--it won the Campbell, Hugo, Jupiter, and Nebula Awards. A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears... -
Claws That Catch by John Ringo, Travis S. Taylor
16 ratingsIt's Not Over Til The Skinny Lady Sings . . . Working off of a piece of intelligence from the alien Hexosehr, the Vorpal Blade is dispatched to investigate rumors of an ancient and powerful civilization that may have been the creators of the “black box” that drives humanity's only space ship... -
Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven by Larry Niven, Rick Sternbach
19 ratingsRanging from the 20th Century to the 31st, these interconnected stories trace Man's expansion and colonization throughout the galaxy...Becalmed in hellHowie's spaceship had a malfunction...but it might be only psychosomatic!Wait it outHe was trapped on Pluto...and all his assets were frozen!The borderland of SolForward possessed the ultimate weapon..Categorized as:
space-opera action-adventure adult aliens anthologies fiction hard-sci-fi solar-system -
Another World by Samuel Best
10 ratingsLeaving Earth is the easy part. Surviving the trip to a nearby spiral arm of our own galaxy is a journey like no other.Merritt Alder is done with Earth. The planet is polluted and overpopulated, and its people are hungry.Earth’s first colony, Galena, is a pioneer world 10,000 light years away. It has clean air, unpolluted water, and continents of arable land...Categorized as:
space-opera action-adventure adult alternate-history book colonization exploration fiction -
Entropy by Gerald M. Kilby
10 ratingsThe science vessel, Hermes, has been urgently recalled from its mission to survey the moons of Saturn, just as First Officer Miranda Lee receives bad news from home—her mother is dying so she must leave the ship and return to Earth—for good... -
Rare Earth by Kurt Allan, Derek Shoales
12 ratingsA lost mining crew, 400 million miles from Earth. A retired miner journeys to find out why. “There’s something out there…” Waldo Packwood has had a rough time of things lately. He’s lost his job, his friends, and finally his family. At 50 years old, he’s living alone in a small apartment wondering what’s happened to his life... -
Fledgling by Sharon Lee, Steve Miller
17 ratingsTheo Waitley has lived all her young life on Delgado, a Safe World that is home to one of the galaxy's premier institutions of higher learning. Both Theo's mother, Kamele, and Kamele's onagrata Jen Sar Kiladi, are professors at the university, and they all live comfortably together, just like they have for all of Theo's life, in Jen Sar's house at the outskirts of town...Categorized as:
space-opera action-adventure audiobook book children-books coming-of-age female-author fiction -
The Gap Into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises by Stephen R. Donaldson
19 ratingsA master storyteller, Stephen R. Donaldson established a worldwide reputation with his unforgettable, critically acclaimed fantasy series The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant. Then, with The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge, he launched a thrilling new science fiction series. Now the galactic epic continues as humanity struggles against the forces of ultimate evil--and its own dark nature... -
Into the Black by Evan Currie
25 ratingsThis edition of Odyssey One has been completely edited and remastered to correct the typos and content issues that reviewers commented on in the original edition. Beyond the confines of our small world, far from the glow of our star, lies a galaxy and universe much larger and more varied than anyone on Earth can possibly imagine... -
The Churn by James S.A. Corey
25 ratingsFrom New York Times bestselling author James S.A. Corey...Before his trip to the stars, before the Rocinante, Amos Burton's was confined to a Baltimore where crime paid you or killed you. Unless the authorities got to you first.Set in the hard-scrabble solar system of Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate and the upcoming Cibola Burn, Beloved of Broken Things deepens James S. A... -
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The Span of Empire by Eric Flint, David Carrico
6 ratingsA new novel in New York Times best seller Eric Flint's science fiction Jao Empire series. It has become clear to both the Jao and their human and Lleix partners that if they are going to defeat the Ekhat who have been terrorizing the galaxy for eons, they need more allies... -
A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 4 by Sharon Lee, Steve Miller
6 ratingsBOOK 4 in the multivolume Liaden Universe® short fiction collection. Tales of the Liaden Universe® brought together for the first time. Space opera and romance on a grand scale in a galaxy full of interstellar trading clans... -
Snow in the Desert by Neal Asher
8 ratingsIn the parched, arid wastes of this far-flung Polity world, Snow is being hunted. With a prize on his head and his life in danger, trust is a luxury he can't afford. Hirald, pale and deadly in the blistering heat, is an ambiguous presence. But who is she? What does she want from him? Mankind has sought Snow's secret for thousands of years, and blood will flow in the desert before it's revealed...Categorized as:
space-opera action-adventure adult anthologies cyberpunk fiction futuristic hard-sci-fi -
The Deep Beyond: Cuckoo's Egg / Serpent's Reach (Union-Alliance Universe) by C.J. Cherryh
9 ratingsTwo of Cherryh's stand-alone SF novels--including the Hugo Award finalist "Cuckoo's Egg"--are now available in this omnibus volume. Original.Cuckoo's EggThey named him Thorn. They told him he was of their people, although he was so different. He was ugly in their eyes, strange, sleek-skinned instead of furred, clawless, different... -
The Road of Danger by David Drake
12 ratingsCaptain Daniel Leary with his friend–and spy–Officer Adele Mundy are sent to a quiet sector to carry out an easy task: helping the local admiral put down a coup before it takes place. But then the jealous admiral gets rid of them by sending them off on a wild goose chase to a sector where commerce is king and business is carried out by extortion and gunfights... -
The Gabble And Other Stories by Neal Asher
12 ratingsMost of Neal Asher's stories are set in a galactic future-scape called 'The Polity', and with this collection of marvellously inventive and action-packed short stories, he takes us further into the manifold diversities of that amazing universe... -
A Call to Duty by David Weber, Timothy Zahn
16 ratingsGrowing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life... the two things his neglectful mother couldn't or wouldn't provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he'd finally found the structure he'd always wanted so desperately.But life in the RMN isn't exactly what he expected... -
Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
26 ratings2057. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclearpowered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. But when Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, inexplicably leaves its natural orbit and heads out of the solar system at high speed, Bella is ordered to shadow it for the few vital days before it falls forever out of reach... -
Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds
26 ratingsThe Inhibitors were designed to eliminate any life-form reaching a certain level of intelligence - and they've targeted humanity. War veteran Clavain and a ragtag group of refugees have fled into hiding. Their leadership is faltering, and their situation is growing more desperate... -
Foundation's Triumph by David Brin
24 ratingsIsaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is one of the highwater marks of science fiction.The monumental story of a Galactic Empire in decline and a secret society of scientists who seek to shorten the coming Dark Age with tools of Psychohistory, Foundation pioneered many themes of modern science fiction... -
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Freehold by Michael Z. Williamson
18 ratingsSergeant Kendra Pacelli is innocent, but that doesn't matter to the repressive government pursuing her. Mistakes might be made, but they are never acknowledged, especially when billions of embezzled dollars earned from illegal weapons sales are at stake... -
Zima Blue and Other Stories by Alastair Reynolds
18 ratingsShort story collection by the critically acclaimed author of Revelation Space and Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days...Categorized as:
space-opera action-adventure adult anthologies cyberpunk fiction hard-sci-fi philosophy -
Ring by Stephen Baxter
16 ratingsMichael Poole's wormholes constructed in the orbit of Jupiter had opened the galaxy to humankind. Then Poole tried looping a wormhole back on itself, tying a knot in space and ripping a hole in time. It worked. Too well. Poole was never seen again. Then from far in the future, from a time so distant that the stars themselves were dying embers, came an urgent SOS--and a promise... -
Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter
16 ratings"And everywhere the Humans went, they found life..."This dazzling future history, winner of the 2000 Philip K. Dick Award, is the most ambitious and exciting since Asimov's classic Foundation saga. It tells the story of Humankind - all the way to the end of the Universe itself... -
Sentenced to Prism by Alan Dean Foster
14 ratingsThe company had a big problem, it was illegally exploiting a fabulously rich planet maned Prism, a world where even the tiniest creatures were living jewels. But somehow, all contact had been lost with the scientist of the survey team. The Company didn't want to draw attention to itself by sending in a rescue mission so they assigned Evan Orgell, a self-confident problem-solver, to investigate... -
Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith
14 ratingsThis is a volume in the NESFA's Choice series. The objective of this series is to publish the classic works of neglected sf authors, and to keep these works in print...Categorized as:
space-opera action-adventure adult anthologies classics dystopia fiction hard-sci-fi
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