
"The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Amongst the ruins of alien civilizations, building our own from the rubble, humanity still thrives. And there are vast fortunes to be made, if you know where to find them... Captain Rackamore and his crew do. It's their business to find the tiny, enigmatic worlds which have been hidden away, booby-trapped, surrounded with layers of protection - and to crack them open for the ancient relics and barely-remembered technologies inside. But while they ply their risky trade with integrity, not everyone is so scrupulous. Adrana and Fura Ness are the newest members of Rackamore's crew, signed on to save their family from bankruptcy. Only Rackamore has enemies, and there might be more waiting for them in space than adventure and fortune: the fabled and feared Bosa Sennen in particular. Revenger is a science fiction adventure story set in the rubble of our solar system in the dark, distant future - a tale of space pirates, buried treasure and phantom weapons, of unspeakable hazards and single-minded heroism... and of vengeance.."
It's (IMHO) very well suited to a series adaptation. (Reasonable set of main actors, accessible, good places to stretch or compress content, few hard-to-visualise internal character mechanics.)
Of course, Ian Banks (RIP) is also great fun.
Alastair Reynolds is one of my favorite authors, and he wrote a book set in a new setting called "Revenger" that was just amazing, and I loved the world. But I finished the book and there are no more and it bums me out :/
Presumably the idea here is to store energy during the day and then return some of it during the night via glow-worm biochemistry. In "Revenger" they actually use growing plants as a kind of electric lighting -- presumably via a kind of reverse photosynthesis converting conduction-band electrons to light.
Lightspeed Trilogy by Ken MacLeod
Revenger by Alastair Reynolds (the first book started off quite well, but the other two became a boring slog)
Rise of the Jain by Neal Asher. This one is just so egregiously bad, I don't know how I managed to finish. If I ever have to read another "erstwhile ship" I'll barf.
etc. etc.
Since I'm reading a lot of sci fi, I've ran out of top 1% or so of books an authors pretty quickly. Now I feel like I'm running out of middle-of-the-road authors, too.
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Edit. I'll add that most sci fi is incapable of even writing characters that have more distinction than "she's a woman, he's a man". They all talk and behave the same.
