Broadening someone's sci-fi horizons

[Vormaerin]

CJ Cherryh's Merchanter books are very Traveller, but they are novels rather than Short Stories. They aren't generally very long, but they are novels. Merchanter's Luck is a great free trader story.

Poul Anderson's Polysotechnic League stories are a collection of short stories (several of them). John Falkayn is probably more approachable than Nicholas Van Rijn.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Andre Norton has some good ones too.

 

[mavikfelna]

I love almost all of these.
For the traveller merchant princes out there, might I add the Tales of the Solar Clippers universe by Nathan Lowell. Fantastic slice of life stories. The Captain Wang books are pretty much him going through character gen as adventure and the Run trilogy is basically a Scout and Merchant having adventures.

 

[Absinthe]

Some of Asimov's short stories. The Singing Bell is very good and is easy to make into an adventure for the Travellers.

 

[CordwainerFish]

In the film department, I'd pick Outland. Sure, the plot is straight up Western - it's consciously a remake of High Noon. But it is an excellent depiction of space as an uncomfortable, dangerous place to work but hey, a guy's got to make a living.

CJ Cherryh's Merchanter books are very Traveller, but they are novels rather than Short Stories.

I flat out adore Cherryh - meeting her was the intellectual analogue of a street tough meeting Bruce Lee [1] but entirely cordial - but at the end of every one of her novels I feel thoroughly exhausted and not entirely certain of what just happened. Which is appropriate because that's also how her protagonist feels at that point. (In the last act of one of her books one character manages to ride a subway and it's described like an explorer hacking his way through the Darien Gap, and due to his background it's about that astounding a feat.)

She has written some short fiction, but it's not very like the Union/Alliance/Compact stories. (Some of them are explicitly set in that continuum, but in a faraway place and are not in the least bit Travellery. They can also only be comprehended by reading several other stories by several other authors, in parallel.)

[1] I was not Bruce Lee.

 

[rinku]

I'll also suggest Bujold, but if the military side of things isn't her bag maybe go with the same entry point I stumbled into and start with Komarr? I went back and filled it in the other books, but Lois deliberately wrote Komarr as an alternative entry point, and there's a phase change in the series between Mercenary Miles and Inquisitor Miles.

Stainless Steel Rat is another worth reading. Now THAT's a book that really deserves a screen version. They could literally use the 2000AD comic as a storyboard!

(And yes, I am aware it was optioned during Harry's lifetime and sank in development hell)

 

[paltrysum]

In my Traveller campaign I have a player whose exposure to Science-Fiction has been limited to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm looking for recommendations for DVDs to watch that might broaden those horizons. I'm thinking of Serenity or Firefly but I am open to other suggestions.

You said DVDs, so I'll assume you specifically want film, not books.

• For the urban feel on high-population worlds, Bladerunner and its sequel Bladerunner 2049.
• The Alien films and recent show for the gritty feel of starships and the depersonalized feel of civilized space. Aliens is good military sci-fi. A lot of people hate Alien: Resurrection, but the pirate crew does have the feel of a group of shady Travellers. Alien: Covenant is quite good and captures some of the dangers of planetary colonization.
• Firefly captures the essence of Traveller, which others have cited.
• Outland, a 1981 space western starring Sean Connery captures the feel well.
• For actual westerns that could be Travellerized, see Silverado, 3:10 to Yuma, and The Magnificent Seven (the original, not the crappy remake).
• Starship Troopers, the 1997 Verhoeven film is a little dated, but pretty good military sci-fi and mimics the deadliness of Traveller combat well.
• The imagery and technology in the recent Foundation TV series was good even if the execution was a little off.
• The Expanse TV series is an excellent Traveller primer.
• Dark Matter is Travelleresque.
• Raised by Wolves was weird and interesting, but sadly got cancelled after only two seasons. Worth a watch.

 

[Condottiere]

I'd say Lower Decks, but you need to have watched some Star Trek to appreciate the humour.

 

[IanBruntlett]

I like throwing in vignettes which can be completed with a single session or two.

Jerry Pournelle wrote some pretty good stuff back in the day too

1. I came up with some vignettes as additional encounters for when I ran "Search and Rescue" at the weekend.
2. Thanks for the Jerry Pournelle recommendation.

 

[FreeTrav]

Books - Novels, not shorts, and there are a lot of them:

C.J.Cherryh - the Chanur novels (there are four)
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller - the Liaden Universe® (there are a metric fsckton)
David Drake - the Republic of Cinnabar Navy series (also called Leary/Mundy) (there are about a dozen)

 

[CordwainerFish]

Outland, a 1981 space western starring Sean Connery

Jinx, you owe me a coke.

Raised by Wolves

Wow, so you're the other person who watched that! (If you like RbW, try Scavengers Reign, which I would kill to get a second season of.)

 

[shirgall]

Firefly in particular captures the sense that the ship itself is a character in the drama. Farscape has some of that feel, too. Star Trek with the various forms of Enterprise and Star Wars IV-VI gets some of that with the Millennium Falcon as well. Cowboy Be-Bop--the original not the live action remake--may be a bit esoteric

 

[paltrysum]

Jinx, you owe me a coke.

Wow, so you're the other person who watched that! (If you like RbW, try Scavengers Reign, which I would kill to get a second season of.)

I watched the first one on the recommendation of one of my sons, and he's been badgering me to finish it. I gotta get back to it. Liked what I saw!

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Bertram Chandler's John Grimes books.

 

[mavikfelna]

The Black Hole, by Disney. It's old and campy sci-fi but fun, or it was 40 years ago.

Flash Gordon, the film or the old movie serial. Again, old, campy sci-fi

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, campy but more modern.

This is the recommended list from Rotten Tomatoes and I can agree with alot of it.

150 Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time - 150 Best Science-Fiction Movies to Watch Now

From cyberpunk to monster mashes, and time-travelling head trips to space operas and beyond, here's the essential science-fiction movies to watch now!

editorial.rottentomatoes.com

And while I appreciate other folks recommending the Starship Troopers movie, don't. It's a terrible movie and a very poor reflection on the book, which is marvelous. Even if the movie took away the title and was a generic sci-fi movie it was bad, especially for military sci-fi. The special effect were decent and the ship and station designs were good and the Ethics and Moral Philosophy class scenes were spot on but outside of that the acting is subpar, the direction is poor, and it's obvious that no one associated with the movie had the least interest in military/naval life or tactics.

 

[CordwainerFish]

The Black Hole, by Disney.

That movie is improved by its faults. (Remember those few years when Disney allowed itself to be strange?)

 

[actionman]

DVDs:

Alien, Aliens, and Alien Romulus.
Serenity.
Dune 1 and 2.
Fifth Element.
Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick.
The Expanse series.

 

[actionman]

I'd pick Outland

Definitely Outland.

 

[actionman]

Does not like TV programmes

A highly intelligent person then.

Spoiler

For books, it depends on what she's into, what she finds interesting. She might not be interested in a lot of the action-oriented military scifi.

• H. Beam Piper, especially Space Viking, as others have mentioned. Uller Uprising was another good one of his. His Little Fuzzy novels were very good, but they aren't all that Travellerish. Junkyard Planet / Graveyard of Dreams could also be a read she might find interesting.
• Jerry Pournelle, his Falkenberg books, and Go Tell the Spartans.
• Harry Harrison's Deathworld Trilogy.
• The Dumarest Series by E.C. Tubb (formulaic, but Traveller is pretty much like Dumarest the Roleplaying Game).
• Robert Heinlein, but his lesser known works like Farmer in the Sky and Podkayne of Mars, as well as Starship Troopers, and his works before he got into his second puberty or whatever inspired him to insert free love etc. themes into his writing.
• David Drake I guess. I read Hammer's Slammers. They were well written, but I didn't find them particularly interesting. She might find the military romanticism profoundly uninteresting.
• Andre Norton's Solar Queen books.
• Alan Dean Foster's Commonwealth stories.

But these and all other literary works aren't particularly good representations of Traveller as it is today, and of course your TU in which she'll be playing will be very different. I'd give her and the other new players a copy of the MgT2e Third Imperium book so she can familiarize herself with the setting, and then ask her what kind of adventures or dramas she'd like to play through in such a setting. Charted Space has great wealth and great poverty, stability and chaos, war but also peace, adventure and stability. It's important for her and your other players to understand they're more in a chaotic Dune-like setting with a deep history, in which their characters need to go out and earn their fortunes than any other kind of setting. Ask her questions about who she'd like to play in the setting, what kind of stories and challenges she like that person to face, and then perhaps use a little Ref fiat to help her design a character she's into rather than subjecting her to the cruel whims of the character generation rules as written.

Here's a link to Traveller literary inspirations: https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Traveller:More_Reading

 

[Sigtrygg]

Jupiter Ascending and Cloud Atlas, my wife and I agreed they were both good films.