Alternatives to Spelljammer

[Alchemistmerlin]

Spelljammer is ridiculous, and I love it.

Sadly, they only ever made 6 spelljammer novels and they're out of print. While I hunt them down, I was wondering if there were similar scifantasy worlds out there I haven't dipped into.

I understand the Dragonriders of Pern series has this as a premise, but stays atmosphere bound after the initial premise.

Any suggestions?

[hamishspence]

Some novels mention spelljammers in passing.

In Elaine Cunningham's Evermeet, for example, a short part of the story shows a spelljammer under attack, and involves the crew crash landing on Faerun after being forced to abandon their ship- and eventually new spelljammers are constructed for Evermeet. They don't see much use in the story though.

[Zaydos]

Andre Norton's Janus books (Judgment on Janus, and Victory on Janus) have a mix of sci-fi (they're a colony world) and fantasy (there's some unexplained magic, telepathy, and space elves). Her Witch-World series has a guy travel to a world where magic works and has some interesting tech v magic. Her good books are, imho, better than the Pern series (which actually has several of her themes; lost colony + telepathic links with animals + unexplained fantastic stuff). As a note Andre Norton wrote the first official D&D novel.

The Darkover series has space travel and magic, from what I know of it (only read one book at random).

The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe takes place on Earth but it mixes sci-fi and fantasy elements.

So does the History of the Runestaff series by Michael Moorcock (who was a fairly big influence on D&D).

Poul Anderson's the High Crusade has medieval crusaders in space.

Jack Vance's the Dragon Masters has people breeding alien creatures into dragons. Combine it with Norton's the Starman's Son and you have Dragon Riders of Pern with less what the...? moments.

That said none of these capture the campy, well indescribably Spelljammery, nature of the Spelljammer setting and I haven't read the Spelljammer novels, but they do mix sci-fi and fantasy elements fairly well.

[factotum]

The closest I can think of to this is Larry Niven's "The Integral Trees" and "The Smoke Ring"--they're both traditional SF, but the setting is a gas torus orbiting a neutron star (or it might be a white dwarf, I forget), and the humans present were marooned there by a sort-of-insane starship computer so had no access to advanced technology for the most part.

[Melayl]

Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series might be something to check out. None of the camp (if you're looking for that), but the "magic" and travel aspects are there.

[Eldan]

Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds is technically Science Fiction. Now, Mr. Reynolds is an ESA physicist, so I wouldn't presume to know more about Quantum Physics than he does. The result, however, is a very weird Steampunk-Western-Cyberpunk-Postapoc-ish setting.

The basic premise is that of a planet divided into zones. Every zone has a different technology level. Some are pre-industrial, where no machines more complicated than a waterwheel work. Some are non-electronic. Others are incredibly advanced, with nanotechnology and cybernetics. Take technology from one zone into another, and it fails.

The story follows a doctor from a zone on about our level who has to go out into the no-tech wasteland. It's pretty damn interesting, but might not be what you are looking for. There is no outright fantasy, really.

[Alchemistmerlin]

All of these suggestions sound quite cool, I think my summer reading list is suddenly getting filled up.


I also grabbed the first 3 of 6 Spelljammer novels off Paizo this morning heh.