Light-Hearted Science Fiction

[Sir Brennen]

Waiting for the Galactic Bus and The Snake Oil Wars, by Parke Gordon.

James Morrow's godhead trilogy: Towing Jehovah, Blameless in Abaddon, and The Eternal Footman as well as his books Only Begotten Daughter and Bible Stories for Adults

Warning: All of the above are of the religious satire variety, but all darn good, funny, thoughtful reads if you're into that sort of thing. Parke Gordon's are more of a sci-fi flavor, while Morrow's works are more contemporary fantasy.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

The Phule's Company series is good (especially the first couple).

It's not exactly "hyuk, hyuk" lighthearted, but the Deathstalker series was created specifically to be a sort of sendup to Space Opera stories. They have some humorous moments, and some satire. The characters aren't all that well fleshed out (one of my issues with Green's storytelling- change the name and you wouldn't know the difference), but some incredibly detailed worlds and organizations.

 

[jcfiala]

It's older, but I've long been a fan of the Hoka stories by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson. Apparently it was recently reprinted by Baen as two volumes - "Hoka! Hoka! Hoka!" and "Hokas Pokas".

The series involves a planet of teddy-bear like primitive aliens who get 'infected' by earth literature - they love the stuff, and continually adopt different genres as their worlds - so, one small island or peninsula may feature the London of Sherlock Holmes, while nearby they've taken up Cowboys & Indians, or somesuch.

 

[papastebu]

Can anyone recommend some light-hearted science fiction. Not necessarily humorous, but just something fun, in the vein of like a faery tale, but with robots or space ships or something? I'm looking for novels mostly.

Have you read anything by Douglas Adams? If you haven't, read The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Your funny bone will thank you.

 

[jonathan swift]

Have you read anything by Douglas Adams? If you haven't, read The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Your funny bone will thank you.

Yeah, I actually have. Thanks everyone for the replies. Sorry if my original post was kind of vague. That's what I get for posting at like 5 am as soon as an idea pops into my head. But I couldn't sleep and wanted to read something fun and "sci-fi"ish but all I have is like Dune, 40k books, and some military sci fi. Which is all fine, just not "fun" like I was looking for. I'll definitely have to check some of these out.

 

[Mistwell]

Phule's Company books and Stainless Steel Rat books are both good calls!

 

[Wystan]

How about the following:

Bill the Galactic Hero (Bad Pulp Sci-fi done right)

Bio of a Space tyrant is good, not light hearted at all but good.

 

[Rackhir]

Bio of a Space tyrant is good, not light hearted at all but good.

I hated that book with a passion and it is one of the MOST unpleasant books I have ever read. You do understand that the OP was looking for something light hearted to read? Most horror novels aren't as graphic with regards to what happens to the characters. The first book is a thinly veiled SF version of things that happened to the 80's vietnamese boat people, but lets run through a synopsis of the plot.

Forced to escape because he stopped a noble from raping his sister. His family manages to get on board an horribly over loaded space craft, they are then repeatedly attacked by pirates who, murder, rape and rob the people on board the ship. They're forced to resort to canibalisim and eat the bodies of their dead parents and finally he is forced to abandon his sister to be lesbian slave of another pirate captain. After all this he's then nearly deported back to his original planet.

You can argue over the quality of the book, but it is NOT a light read and it is in no way shape or form humerous.

 

[Dracomeander]

For easy reads, have you read any H. Beam Piper?

His Space Viking and Fuzzy books - Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens - are pure sci-fi.

Or you could try his Paratime novellas culminating with Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen.

 

[GSHamster]

Lois McMaster Bujold's <i>Miles Vorkosigan</i> books have a lot of humour in them. They are also really good.