No love for Iain M Banks? The Culture series looks like it will tick all your boxes and instead of following a single protagonist the Culture itself is the protagonist so each book has it's own cast of interesting characters.

What? No love for the Pern books by Anne McCaffrey? I love em. Gotta love genetically engineered dragons.

Alastair Reynolds - Revelation space i.e. Inhibitor sequence

Peter F Hamilton - Void trilogy in the Commonwealth universe

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. I liked the prequel, A Deepness in the Sky even more.

Pandora’s Star and the sequel Judas Unchained by Peter F Hamilton

The Three Body problem is a an absolutely phenomenal take on the Dark Forest Theory.

It has the unfortunate quality of reading like a news article at times, recounting events, rather than feeling like an illustrated narrative. And some plot points hinge on the authors pre-conceived notions about gender that really didn't sit well with me.

This is kind of cheese ball, but have you tried Steve Perry's Matador series? The books aren't very long, but there's quite a few of them. Lots of fun characters and villains and such and it's a light, fun read.

Two obvious suggestions are Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series, and Issac Asimov’s “Foundation” series.

Both are sci-fi classics (Dune is still the best selling sci-fi book of all time I believe) and are space operas of a massive scope.

They are also some of my personal favorites.

John Scalzi's Old Man's War series was a long and pretty interesting read.

Premise starts out as a "humanity vs the stars" kind of story, but instead of sending young people to their deaths, the futuristic human society instead recruits old people who have already lived full lives. You can enlist towards the end of your natural life to transfer your mind to a (photo)synthetic purpose-built humanoid super soldier body. If you survive a period of time (5 years?), you earn another shot at life and can elect to become a colonist for far away worlds. Most don't get that far. Your usual "long-term relationship tensions," "humans are always bad guys," "what will technology think of next?" tropes apply.

Another series I liked is the Castle Federation series by Glynn Stewart.

This series spans a much shorter timeframe throughout its books but contains much more civil-war type political intrigue and seems to focus more on an important battle or two per book. As such, you get a more granular view of one starship officers experiences from the unit level up to the fleet. Tactics, deception, and an almost constant state of Pyrrhic victories help to make you feel like you aren’t simply following around a grand hero figure who is the unspoken savior of the galaxy. I don’t really remember how the series starts, but it’s mostly (or all) human-vs-human conflicts.

Last series I enjoyed is the Frontlines storyline by Marko Kloos.

In contrast to the stories above, it’s humans (mostly) good, aliens bad. A dystopian future is rocked by the sudden appearance of monolithic and seemingly invincible stegosaurus-like alien beings. They show up, terraform your world with CO2, and brush off humanity like we’re ants. You follow a few main characters who give you insight to how the big governments operate, how soldiers are thrown into unwinnable conflicts, and how freedom fighters back home protest against the majority of humanity’s production efforts going towards war while ignoring the problems at home. There’s a good mix of hopeless alien combat, human conflict and frustration towards the military industrial complex, Judge Dredd-like slums, and some anthropology thrown into the mix. Facing an existential threat, would you throw everything at offense and let your people starve?

Children Of Time Trilogy.

Amazing books that explore topics like Consciousness and Intelligence from angles you wouldn't expect

Thankyou DoisBigo, I didn't know other people liked Kris Longknife and Honor Harrington. I pickup random space operas from charity stores -- which if their shelves are any metric then it seems my entire country wants to read nothing but stories about ordinary people on earth; good stuff is few and far between.

Hal Spacejock is good. I found the second book first, it was a hoot (opening: robot on the spaceship panics after making a mistake, wipes its own memory so nothing can be proven, the ship then starts failing and the robot assumes the captain must be at fault for poor maintenance). Some surreal space-opera travel scenes across planets towards the end mixed in with lots of humour.

"Revelation Space" by Alastair Reynolds was definitely interesting. At times a bit stretched out, but it had some cool concepts in it (like safely arresting your fall down an elevator shaft by reversing the thrust of an entire spaceship). Scale was insane (crazy time & space) but then it all focuses on a few smaller points, which felt a bit too distilled for what felt like a big universe moments before. Characters were 50/50 and I didn't enjoy some of their arcs, but the others were good.

A few months back I finished "Crystal Healer" (the dodgiest book title ever if you didn't know it was a space opera) by S.L. Viehl. I remember almost nothing from it, except a hot cat-woman that was enslaved to the main character. No mental staying power whatsoever, but I think I enjoyed reading it.

I recently found a book on my shelf "War Games" by Brian Stableford. I thought I hadn't read this. I opened the first page and found:

2013-02-25 I want to crush this novel. Why? ... because the author did not write a sequel.

No idea what it's about :D

Thankyou everyone in this topic for suggestions. If you want any of the books I mention then just poke me, it's better I send them to someone else rather than let them sit on my shelf forever. I'm in Australia.

Peter F Hamilton

• Greg Mandel trilogy
• Confederation universe
• Void Trilogy
• The Chronicle of the Fallers

And more that I haven't read now I look him up

I've actually really been enjoying the Warhammer 40k books, started with the Ultramarines omnibus, fun sci Fi fantasy

I also really like the Honor Harrington series. I’m also a big fan of the Liaden universe created by Lee and Miller.

Have you read revelation space? I also recommend house of suns from the same author. They fit your criteria

The Nanotech Succession by Linda Nagata is pretty awesome if less well-known.

The Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson. It's a huge favorite across our family.

Have you read Hannu Rajaniemis Jean le Flambeur series?

It's a very high concept narrative, that begins with our main character being broken out of a simulated prison, where he is forced to play endless games of the prisoners dilemma, against endless copies of himself and other prisoners.

It continues on to tell a story set within our solar system, that's complex on levels that can be hard to keep up with at times.

In this universe, where people end and software begins, is blurred, and the same is true for the edge between reality and simulation.

Some people are doomed to exist and be used as mere software for completing complex tasks, while others step through matter-conversion gates between the real and simulated on a regular basis.

I really, really loved it.

Spinward Fringe series is good and decently long

How about the Uplift series by David Brin? Start with Sundiver

I really like Neal Asher's books. Sprawling long series (what is the plural of series?) and so good.

Was recommended the Children of Time books, am halfway through the first and WOW. I love it.

Revelation Space.

Niven's Ringworld series

Foundation?

Ooh, another operatic that comes to mind: 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson