I’m looking to get inspiration for my own writing. I need a hard sci fi series where earth (and earthlike worlds) are too rare, inaccessible, and/or previously spoiled beyond ability to sustain life. Bonus points if it is set on a multi-generational space station or starship without any other options and goes into detail about life support, living space, mineral mining and expansion of the station to accomodate a growing population, and daily life of it’s residents.
If anyone remembers Drifter Colonies from Titan A.E., that’s what’s in my head.
I’m looking for The Martian levels of realism, and I’m fine with a bit of “Unobtanium” clichés if they’re not core to the story.
Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven is a fantastic book that might be near what you are looking for. It’s about an asteroid impact on Earth, this removes a lot of the population and infrastructure and the story focuses on a few different groups of people as they make do with what they can find or scavenge, and then the resource battling that goes on between groups.
A story line I remember well is on a group that found an abandoned neighborhood and were astonished to find that it still had running water from the nearby local dam/reservoir. They lived here for quite a while in their relative luxury until it just stopped working one day. A burst pipe in some other neighborhood had slowly drained the dam faster than they would have used it up.
Anyway, it’s a great book because it feels so realistic as to what would really happen and the struggles people would actually be going through.
Alas, Babylon. Earth Abides. On The Beach. The Road. One Second After (this one is meh).
If you want some other good collapse survival books similar to Lucifer’s Hammer.
Yes, Earth Abides is also good! I had forgotten about that one until I saw your comment
