I want to read a book. Can you help me find one. I want to read a book about a few people who leave Earth (assumingly in a ship) and colonize an uncharted, uninhabited planet. I want to read about what happens to them when they get there and how they explore the new frontier of their new home. I don't want to read about space-aliens nabbing them or fighting wars with space-creatures. That's not what I'm looking for at all. Rather, how did they survive the vast emptiness and newness of a world devoid of any intelligent life.

Imagine leaving Earth, possibly as some last-resort attempt at survival, running from a doomed planet or an oppressive society, or some other catastrophe, not knowing where you're going, no destination, very few gathered suppies, just escaping. Now imagine stumbling across some uninhabited planet, devoid of intelligent life, and deciding it's a good place to start over and create a society. What happens? Who leads? Do you create a government? Does everyone stay in one region and live together or do some, who have not yet had enough adventure, strike-out on their own to see what's over the next horizon.

I suppose you could say sci-fi meets old-west. You're here in this new place, there is no structures, no power, no modern conveniences and you have to start over. You have to learn how to farm, hunt and distill water without the convenience of technology. It is an old-world paradise... if you're willing to work hard.

I'm looking for a good book like this. Can anyone suggest a good one? Perhaps our PBS sci-fi junkies know of a few?

Or do I need to write it myself? LOL

Thanks,

-T

 Dear Tony, have you tried the SciFan site?  it lists books by theme, so may help in search.

Dear Tony,

I have a few suggestions for you and a little info, that may help you find what you're looking for.  The type of book you describe is called a "boat book" by writers, and a lot of them have done one or more of them.   The Grand Master of SciFi, Robert Heinlein, wrote many during his career, including "Starman Jones" and "Have Spacesuit Will Travel".   But  IMO the books that best fit your description are by Anne McCaffrey, who wrote the PERN series(which kinda fits the criteria as well).    Early in her career she wrote "Dinosaur Planet" and a sequel, "Dinosaur Planet Survivors".  These wwere among the first scifi books i ever read, and i remember really enjoying them, hope you will, too.

  Some of the books i've been reading recently are so cool, i just have to tell somebody about them, but they may be too "shoot'em up" to fit your wants exactly.  But please try "Vorpal Blade" by John Ringo,  it is the coolest possible combination of StarTrek and "Starship Trooper"!

Good luck on finding just the book you want, hope  i've been some help.

I never got that the PERN series was about a people who left one plant and colonized another. I thought they started on Pern, then Pern changed for the worse and they stayed and tried to survive it. It's been a while since I read those.

Actually if you get farther into the PERN series you find out that they were originally settlers from a colony ship. With the name even being a reference to the status of the planet. Parallels Earth, Resources Negligible

If you read the books after White Dragon (I think) they find the original settlement and eventually the colony ship in orbit and there are some of the books -whose names escape me at the moment that actually go back to the first colonists.

Ah, that explains it. I think I only read the first 2 books, then I went on to other books.

Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem

The Freedom series by Anne McCaffrey are exactly about surviving on a strange planet and it's not easy!!

You want Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey.  It's about the settlers who left Earth establishing their colony on Pern.  Also recommended is the short story "The Survey: P.E.R.N." from The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall.  This short story is about the team who originally surveyed the planet as a potential location for colonization.

I second the recommendation for  Anne McCaffrey's  Freedom series.

The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson may be interesting to you. There is a lot of technology so it may not be the "old west" theme you are looking for, but there is a lot of exploration of the sociological forces that are at work in forming a society as well as the technology involved in terraforming the planet.  Alas.....no Green Men or Deja Thoris on this mars.

the Pern series is about settlers on a new planet, (explains how it is now), and then goes back to the Southern Continent & find the original colony. Very interesting series. Very fun.

Let me take you way back to this author: A.E. Van Vogt Have you read, "The Voyage of the Space Beagle"?

Highly recommended -- Not too many bad aliens wanting to kills us humans. I finally got to read it as part of this edition: Three in Space

I still need to read the third book in this omnibus, and I might be willing to post it afterwards -- PM me to ask me if you're interested!

My all time favorite sci - fi, *TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE*, by Heinlein...it has every situation, every thing anyone could possibly imagine happening..plus some...

An excellent read...

Coyote, by Allen Steele. Wonderful book, IMO.

A review from StrangeHorizons.com:

"Coyote opens with the Hugo Award-nominated novella "Stealing Alabama," a grueling tale of political dissidents fleeing a totalitarian future America by hijacking an interstellar spacecraft. The spacecraft is destined for a habitable moon in the Ursae Marjoris system, the world called Coyote. Here we first meet those characters who will go on to shape the series. These include Wendy Gunther, an alienated teenager who has spent most of her life in government juvenile camps and is now being reunited with her estranged father. Also aboard are the Montero and Levin families, dissident intellectuals fleeing persecution from the state. And then there is the crew of the Alabama itself, led by the mission's captain, Robert Lee. These men and women have become traitors in an attempt to recapture a libertarian vision that exists at the heart of the American dream. It's a taut and tension-ridden opening, one that is clearly rooted in the American politics of today. The unknown world these people seek gives every indication of being as inhumane and unjust as the world they have left behind. The direness of the situation on Earth, however, makes it clear why they have chosen this path.

It's easy to see why this story captured the minds of those initially reading it in Asimov's. It has all the earmarks of great science fiction—rich characters in a desperate situation simultaneously familiar and alien—and embraces the heritage of Joe Haldeman and Robert Heinlein, by capturing a uniquely American vision of the future. Coyote becomes the backdrop for Steele to explore issues of government, individual rights, and the mythology of the frontier. The rest of the book goes on to illustrate the many hardships these people must now face. From a shipboard error that awakens a member of the crew a century or so too early, to the newfound perils upon Coyote itself, there quickly proves no guarantee that everything will turn out fine for these characters. Especially since some of the very characters with whom we sympathized so closely in the opening die within days of landing upon the planet.

Steele uses a mix of techniques to tell these stories, from journal entries and scientific reports made by the characters, to straight prose that blends science fiction with first-hand accounts of the American West. Sometimes the tone is reminiscent of Lewis and Clark, other times a Heinlein juvenile novel. The tone shifts in completely new directions with each chapter. After "Stealing Alabama" comes the eerie novella "The Days Between," where poor Leslie Gillis finds himself "stranded" in outer space. Destined to die alone and isolated between worlds, he manages to maintain his sanity by writing, of all things, a fantasy novel set upon the world he will never live to see. By the end of Coyote we have ridden upon the rivers of the world, encountered ballplants and boids, seen madness and betrayal, and finally witnessed the arrival of another colony ship."