Find me a Survival Sci Fi Story/Novel

[MKSheppard]

So guys, this is when you get to be fun and suggest to shep what to read!

The "make your own survival horror" game thread in G&C got me to thinking.

Have there been any novels or suchlike, when the protagonists are trapped on some aging ore freighter, or something, and it's slowly coming to pieces etc and they have to survive until rescue arrives or something like that?

[MKSheppard]

Oh come on, there isn't even a single science fictiony novel set around surviving in a colony or ship gone bad?

I know there are the Aliens licensed tie-in novels by Steve Perry, etc; but generally, in the Aliensverse, people are retarded stupid shitheads, and I'd like some brains from my protagonists...

[Temjin]

The closest I can think of is "The Wreck of the River of Stars", but I'm not sure it's precisely what you're looking for. It's more of a tragedy than a horror novel. And even then, while I loved the book and place it as one of the best I've read, I sometimes have horrible taste in books and it may not be everyone's cup of tea. It's also a very character driven novel, with not much happening in the book outside of the character's interactions with each other (from what I can remember anyway, since it's been two years since I've read it).

[Temjin]

It's more of a tragedy than a horror novel.

Ghetto Edit: It actually has no horror at all in it.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The problem isn't 'find a survival SF novel', I can see at least four from where I'm sitting now, it's 'find something that's going to make sense to a genocidal warmonger'.
I mean, 'A Maze of Death' and 'The Penultimate Truth' just aren't you. Actually, no, reconsider, The Penultimate Truth does have nukes in.

How generic a recommendation do you want- a particular author to look out for, or something as precise as an ISBN number?

Anyway, people notable for perpetrating this sort of thing, I'd say Gregory Benford- his Galactic Centre cycle might not be precisely it but it's good violent silly fun. Brian Aldiss, too many to list but the Helliconia trilogy in particular. Poul Anderson, in parts, Mike Resnick in the same.
Frank Herbert's The Dragon in the Sea is probably exactly what you're after, and it has the added benefit of being especially nuclear.

[MKSheppard]

How generic a recommendation do you want- a particular author to look out for, or something as precise as an ISBN number?

Relatively Generic, but names/titles would be nice.

And you seem to be suffering from a misperception that what I meant when I said "survival fiction" was:

"Oh god, the world has ended in nuclear hellfire!".

I'm referring more to a Poiseidon Adventure-like survival fiction, where you have to fight your way past the steadily increasing wreckage of a once mighty spacestation/ship to survive. Of course, if it's got aliens or some disease, that's a bonus.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Ah, well, now, you do have a reputation,the glare from which blinded me there a bit. I have to admit I'm not entirely certain what I'd translate that into in me- speak; novels of combat xenoarchaeology:?

In which case, yes, most of those recommendations go out of the window. I mean, Dragon in the Sea is basically a submarine story. I'm not sure what does come in, though; I can think of a few short stories that fit the bill, and a few segments of larger books- CH Cherryh's Merchanters universe includes a few station fights that could do, but there's a lot of chaff to go through there before you get the wheat.

Problem is, I can't think of many if any full length novels that have that sort of thing as the whole of the story. I mean, the backstory of Fred Pohl's Gateway would be perfect, but that's the bit he didn't put down on paper.

No doubt I'm missing something screamingly obvious, but for that kind of plot, I'd look to short stories rather than novels, to hard rather than soft SF, and to well before the modern day, fifties or seventies. The two clearest examples that come to mind are actually medical- James White's 'Ambulance Ship' includes a search through a derelict generation ship for survivors or the descendants of survivors, and Murray Leinster's med ship stories go down that route from time to time.

I'd still say Brian Aldiss is a good one to look out for, Alistair Reynolds maybe although he is more recent, Fredrik Pohl and John Brunner; in general, sci-fi writers who aren't afraid of a downbeat ending, and there were just more of them during the fifties and seventies.

[hawkwind]

Enemy stars by Poul Anderson.

Jaro

[Vanas]

Only one I can think of off the top of my head that I've read is Aldiss' Non-Stop, which is really rather good. Going on about the story would probably spoil it, but it's a cracking read.

[Imperial Overlord]

There's The Legacy of Heorot by Niven and cowriters where a bunch of colonists with limited resources have to deal with the highly dangerous local ecology/wildlife.

In a similar vein there's David Drake Redliners where a battered military unit gets orders to act as security for a bunch of involuntary colonists on what turns out to be a particularly lethal hellworld. As a bonus, the book opens with the engagement that cuts up the Strikers and fuck is it nasty.

[Darth Nostril]

Well you're after action/adventure kind of thing in derelict/crashed spacecraft ...... the only wrecked ship story I can recall reading that comes to mind has been mentioned earlier, A Maze of Death, and that's more a sci-fi murder mystery with a really fucked twist in the tail.
Maybe some of Reynolds books as they involve centuries old starships, still flyable but literally falling apart at the seams, sometimes with the crews winding up fighting the semi sentient repair & surveillance systems as they go berserk/get infected by alien mentalities ....

[Hawkwings]

As a bonus, Redliners is available in the Baen Free Library. http://www.webscription.net/p-341-redliners.aspx

[cosmicalstorm]

This is probably not a good suggestion but A Fall of Moondust by A.C. Clarke is one of the best Sci-Fi "survive until rescue arrives" stories I've ever read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fall_of_Moondust

[Crom]

The Road by Cormac McCarthy certainly scared the hell out of me. It's about a father and a son trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds. Near future miners find a moon of Saturn starts zooming off on its own.

[The Yosemite Bear]

There;s always "Vic and Blood a tale of a boy and his dog" which has mutants and other things.

[Samuel]

"In the Halls of Martian Kings". Short story and recent- it is mostly hard. Crew of the first manned Mars mission get stuck on the Red planet with half their number dead. Not really horror. For that I'd recommend Diamond Dogs by Alister Reynolds.

[NetKnight]

Also by Arthur C. Clarke, the short story "A Walk in the Dark" leans far more to a horror bent then A Fall of Moondust, and is damn creepy to boot.

[The Nomad]

"In the Halls of Martian Kings". Short story and recent- it is mostly hard. Crew of the first manned Mars mission get stuck on the Red planet with half their number dead. Not really horror. For that I'd recommend Diamond Dogs by Alister Reynolds.

This one reminded me of the movie Cube. Plain weird, even for Reynolds.

[Samuel]

I know. It was amazingly creepy for me. Most of Reynolds stuff goes more towards political infighting- that was pure man vs nature.

I had trouble sleeping for a couple nights after reading it. I kept on thinking the walls were turning black and patched with patterns...

Probably just me. Most of you won't experience that level of terror.

[MKSheppard]

I mean, the backstory of Fred Pohl's Gateway would be perfect, but that's the bit he didn't put down on paper.

Gateway was really awesome. I always loved the concept of "we don't know what this alien ship does, but we'll put you in it and you push a button to see where it goes; maybe you'll survive!"

[andrewgpaul]

"In the Halls of Martian Kings". Short story and recent- it is mostly hard. Crew of the first manned Mars mission get stuck on the Red planet with half their number dead. Not really horror. For that I'd recommend Diamond Dogs by Alister Reynolds.

This one reminded me of the movie Cube. Plain weird, even for Reynolds.

Pretty sure he's said Cube was the inspiration.

There's some of Stephen Baxter's stuff that's about survival against the odds. Some of his short stories especially.

[The Yosemite Bear]

there was the one lovecraft story about the astronauts trapped in a labrentian complex that keeps moving.

[Sriad]

It just occurred to me that (except for not quite being sci-fi) The Terror, Dan Simmon's fictional retelling of the doomed arctic expedition in 1848, is exactly what you asked for. Two ships of the Royal Navy, trapped in the ice for years, impossibly far from rescue...

Hugo-winner Simmons (Olympos) brings the horrific trials and tribulations of arctic exploration vividly to life in this beautifully written historical, which injects a note of supernatural horror into the 1840s Franklin expedition and its doomed search for the Northwest Passage. Sir John Franklin, the leader of the expedition and captain of the Erebus, is an aging fool. Francis Crozier, his second in command and captain of the Terror, is a competent sailor, but embittered after years of seeing lesser men with better connections given preferment over him. With their two ships quickly trapped in pack ice, their voyage is a disaster from start to finish. Some men perish from disease, others from the cold, still others from botulism traced to tinned food purchased from the lowest bidder. Madness, mutiny and cannibalism follow. And then there's the monstrous creature from the ice, the thing like a polar bear but many times larger, possessed of a dark and vicious intelligence. This complex tale should find many devoted readers and add significantly to Simmons's already considerable reputation.

[Count Chocula]

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. First Contact results in humanity face-to-face with the most feared archetype in its religious traditions.