The first three are a "tour" of the way a ship operates. Steward (and cargo), engineering (book 2), and deck (book 3). Of the first three, I think the second is the weakest, but book 3 picks up. There's possibly a bit of wish fulfillment writing in there... after becoming an officer (book 4), there's very little of "time in port" as responsibilities dictate otherwise.

Book 4 has a time jump of college - four years are a few paragraphs... and then he's an officer in a very unhappy ship. Books 5 and 6 finish off the 'share' sequence. If the first three are coming of age of a youth, the next three are the coming of age of a man.

If you're going through and reading them, at this point I'd switch to the "Run" series which has two young women in a very small ship in the toeholds. There's a lot of world building associated with it. These have much more of a plot to them.

Dark Knight Station: Origins might be a good read at this point if we're establishing a reading order which establishes the backstory of two characters (one who appears in Home Run, the other who appears in Suicide Run). Home Run fills in some gaps outside of Ishmael. The three books together help with some of the larger backstory that will show up several times.

This then brings us back to Ishmael with the series In Ashes Born, To Fire Called, and By Darkness Forged. Not going to provide any plot elaboration that might spoil previous books (things do keep building).

And lastly, there's the "School" series with SC Marva Collins with School Days, Working Class, and Hard Knocks... and this is as far as the author has gotten with the Solar Clipper series.

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If you had trouble with the 2nd, finish the 3rd and then give the 4th a try. I like the entire series and its world building. The mundanity of Ishmael's life (where exciting is often not a good thing). I really liked the later books - especially In Ashes Born.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/206519-solar-clipper-univer... - you'll see that Half Share is the lowest score of them.

Imagine getting a Steward's Assistant ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steward%27s_assistant ) position on a cargo ship... something like https://recruiting.paylocity.com/Recruiting/Jobs/Details/246... (granted, that one is likely only out for days rather than weeks or months) ... and if you've got that job, its much less interesting than the things that can happen when you're working engineering... or deck... or become an officer on deck.

Yes, being a steward on a ship that has a few months between port of call is tedious... but you don't start out as a captain with the interesting things happening. You've got to work your way up the ladder and he started out on the bottom rung. Ship's Steward | Life at Sea | https://youtu.be/U02ndHzJGic as a book.

One of the things about the series though... there's no grand military conflict going on. There's no fighting aliens or heroic space marines. It's (initially) the story of a young man getting his family suddenly pulled away from him and thrown into the Deep Dark as he searches for his place. Not actively... though he gets that advice too. There's also a component of needing to take an active role in making life decisions compared to letting life drag you along (things tend to go less well for Ishmael when he lets life pull him).

Book 1:

    “Look in your handbook, young Ishmael, and consider that your feet are already on a path. It might be wiser to select a branch before one is thrust upon you by circumstance.” With that, he strolled out of the galley.

    His knowing look told me he remembered his own advice to me in the mess deck of the Lois. To choose a path before I found myself on one that I hadn’t chosen. “You once told me that I should consider that I’m on the path I’m supposed to be on.”

Books 4, 5, and 6 (Double Share, Captain's Share, Owner's Share) have much more going on with the decisions (and are likely more relatable as someone closer in age) than the equivalent of a day in the life of a unskilled 20 something... but the day in the life of the unskilled 20 something sets the foundations for how the decisions (and problems) of the man he becomes are dealt with.

I think the problem with modern Star Trek series is that they simply have terrible writing. DS9 produced some of the best TV ever with action/sci-fi blends, and it also did more dialogue driven scenarios phenomenally well. I think the thing that really drew people in to DS9/TNG is that the writers really seemed to understand people of all perspectives, and so were able to create highly compelling characters and stories.

For instance the various plot points in DS9 between Sisko and Eddington (like "For the Uniform") often have you starting to cheer for the 'bad guys', while really confusing the question of who the good guy and who the bad guy even is. DS9 even excels as 'humanizing' the Cardassians who are, on the surface at least, just an evil trope. And recent times in real life should emphasize, to the point of absurdity, that this is what people and situations are genuinely like.

But the modern Star Treks feel like they were written by people living in a bubble with minimal life experience. They rely on political tropes and diametrically opposed good/evil stuff that's utterly banal, and intellectually insulting. They actually do have some of the same writers as previous shows though, so I assume there must be production/directorial pressures that caused the shift in 'style.'

Which episode has muppets?

DS9 took more risks and the characters are more complex and layered. A few of the episodes are up there with the best TV ever made.

TNG is very, very good, but it wears its heart on its sleeve. Picard never struggles with existential moral ambiguity. Even when he (rarely) fails, he's always The Good Man.

The utopian slant is appealing and we can't help cheering for him, but DS9 revealed there was some sleight of hand behind the narrative.

Of the series since, I think only Battlestar Galactica approached similar complexity. Maybe Westworld, which got quite abstract and interesting towards the end.

The Expanse is more by the numbers. It's basically class war in space, with the military, the aristocracy, and the peasants slugging it out, while a dragon rolls in and threatens to eat everything. The writing is very challenge -> response -> partial solution over and over, and for me it just doesn't have the depth or the emotional reach. (Or the acting chops.)

> I liked season 1 of the Expanse - the settings and production were fantastic, but I found the characters just became overwritten and annoying as the show went on.

I recommend reading the original book series. In my opinion the writing only gets better as it goes on, and it’s obvious the writers had a plan in mind from the beginning rather than just writing more books for the sake of continuing a series where the ideas were all used up in the first book or two

> everyone tries to copy the dark, morally compromised, postmodern, realpolitik tone.

GoT was a late-comer to this. For me, William Gibson’s _Neuromancer_ (1984) was my first exposure to dark and morally-compromised Sci-Fi. I am sure it predates this in novels. _Neuromancer_ inspired a couple of movies in the 90s: The Net and Johnny Mneumonic come to mind.

In US TV shows, I think Babylon 5 started the lean into the dark tone, and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica of the 2000s is a better example than GoT.

Expanse is a very strange tv show. Their main cast is utterly bland and have absolutely no chemistry with each other, the only interesting character is maybe Amos, but almost all secondary characters are top notch, with lots of great actors and tons of charisma. It is typical for some belter captain who appears in 2 episodes to effortlessly outshine the whole Rocinante crew.

I watched the battle star reboot for the first time recently and the whole cylon reveal drama really ruined it for me. It felt like they were picked for shock value rather than story consistency. The first season was great, but it fell off for me and was a struggle to care by season 4. And I gave up on caprica after an episode or two.

What is it you don’t like about it?

And which sci-fi shows would you recommend instead?

> a meaningless, ugly, depressing trash show only possible to produce in an empire in terminal decline.

It's an OK sci-fi show but the US isn't in decline. In fact, the opposite is occurring, minus those espousing Marxist ideology dragging us down a bit.