- Pilot & navigator duo protagonists, yes please. (If one of them is female, don’t make the whole point of the story revolve around her femaleness, please. -.-)
- Great characters and characterization, fully developed & consistent
- Witty and fun
- Action sequences are welcome!
- Respectful towards female and male characters both
- Romance welcome, but not as an afterthought. If present, give some thought to the actual relationship and development, not just the attraction/attractiveness aspects
- Some sort of interesting take on spaceships or hyperspace or jump drives or other forms of FTL travel. (Not a huge fan of cryosleep and slower, generational-ship style stories)
- Cool tech
- Aliens that don’t resort to just being overlarge insects. Humanoids are welcome, though.
- Telepathy, teleportation, other superpowers and fantastic elements welcome alongside all the fancy tech
- A nod to actual science is great, but I don’t like it when Science is the whole point of the story, nor do I think we need to limit the story by our current knowledge of the sciences.
- No heavy-indebted, down-on-his-luck, alcoholic, lazy jerk character takes-a-gamble-for-his-redemption trope
- Galactic Empire vs. Rebellion, overdone
- Character’s past is the key to saving the universe, no thanks
- Some thought towards language & cultural barriers
No story is going to hit all of these (probably), but anyone know of anything that hits most of these? I’ve been craving space adventures and I have the worst luck finding things I like to read in this genre.
Dragons, Faeries, Space & Stars 
July 30th, 2014 at 11:32 am
I can’t express how much I love this list.
July 30th, 2014 at 3:09 pm
Haha, well, you’re welcome to use it or spread it about somehow. Maybe we’ll get our SF heart’s desire. *amused*
July 31st, 2014 at 4:31 pm
If you don’t mind YA, L.J. Cohen’s Derelict is very good.
July 31st, 2014 at 8:42 pm
Ooh, thanks for the recommendation! I’ll have to check it out. 😀
August 31st, 2014 at 8:17 pm
If you don’t mind webcomics, you could try Schlock Mercenary. It seems to fit most of your checklist. Witty and fun? Check. Some (but not too much) real science? Check. A non-bug alien (or five)? Check!
If you don’t like it, don’t worry! If you love it, let me know! If you’ve already read it, cool!
September 2nd, 2014 at 11:12 pm
I’ll have to give it a try! Thanks for the recc 😀