Sci-Fi Romance?

[meeera]

If fantasy is included and not all the books in a series have to be a big-R Romance, I'll also rec the Incryptid series by Seanan McGuire. Fun whimsical urban fantasy series about a contemporary world where cryptids are real, and there is a clash between cryptid hunters who want to kill them all, and those who want to protect the more harmless ones.

Also: Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series and spinoffs

Stephanie Burgis: Harwood Spellbook series

Outlander as recced above

Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling series

The Graceling series has some romantic bits and is terrific (Kristin Cashore)

The Captive Prince - not to everyone's taste, but a lot of people love it

Paladin's Grace by T Kingfisher

Uprooted, Naomi Novik

Tamora Pierce, pretty much everything

Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Alyssa Cole's Off the Grid series

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Glamourist Histories series

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by meeera

If fantasy is included

This makes me wonder if there are any Utopian SF works in which these two genres are NEVER conflated instead of ALWAYS, as is this case on this orb.

[ametzler]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

SciFi series with female protagonists, with various degrees of romantic involvement:

[...]
S L Viehl - Stardoc series
[...]

Warning: Stardoc novels contain huge amounts of torture. (Real, not in a BDSM way.) They are IMHO very very very far from "Romance".

[Xanthe]

Are you sure we're talking about the same Stardoc series? My memory of it is not one of torture; it's basically space opera. It's not a cosy. The books aren't all sweetness and light, but the main character is a trauma doctor with an emotionally cold father, so there's darkness with the light in the stories and a whole bunch of aliens with different cultural mores.

There's a definite romantic story arc through the series.

[cpegg]

There's some romance in Julie Czerneda's Species Imperative books (Survival, Migration and Regeneration) but it's only a part of the larger story - perhaps not enough to satisfy someone looking primarily for romance.

Julie Czerneda's Clan Chronicles series (starting with the fourth book A Thousand Words for Stranger) contains an ongoing romance between two main characters. The series can be started at the fourth book, which if I remember correctly was the first one written.

[ametzler]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

Are you sure we're talking about the same Stardoc series? My memory of it is not one of torture; it's basically space opera. It's not a cosy. The books aren't all sweetness and light, but the main character is a trauma doctor with an emotionally cold father, so there's darkness with the light in the stories and a whole bunch of aliens with different cultural mores.

Yes, I am sure. The main character is pretty much unkillable, and being in some kind of laboratory where an evil scientist hurts her in some way is a frequent occurence.

In one novel she is enslaved and marked with some kind of brand which she heals away and this brand is reapplied in a more and more painful way again and again. That kind of brutality is really a recurring theme in the novels.

[Xanthe]

That wasn't my remembrance of the series, perhaps because I read a lot of urban fantasy and science fiction where violence is part of the characters' life experiences, so the fact that Cherijo copes/overcomes the bad things that occur in the books is what I takeaway from them, not that they occur. Then again, I read the books as an adult, so the things that happen to her over the course of the series didn't really cause any shock. I've read much worse.

[MagdalenaR]

There have been some good suggestions already, especially McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books (Shards of Honour, etc.).

Karen Lord's The Best of All Possible Worlds is a great love story as well as scifi.

T. Kingfisher would be another author to look at: I started with Clockwork Boys. She does some off-beat revisions of classic fairytales as well (e.g. Bryony & Roses--Beauty & the Beast).

Sharon Shinn would be yet another to look at. I liked Archangel both for the romance & the setting. This is the start of a series of novels.

Martha Wells, the Murderbot Diaries writer, has some good fantasy novels as well. The romance tends to be a bit more in the background, but The Element of Fire & Death of the Necromancer both have a romance as part of the plot.

There is a series called the Great Space Race where a bunch of writers each wrote an novel/entry in a reality show--these are racier in the other sense of the word too. Teresa Noelle Roberts, one of these authors, has a series loosely inspired by Firefly called Chronicles of the Malcolm. The first one is Thrill-Kinky; it leans toward erotica.

A much better, Firefly-inspired novel with a sweet human/non-human FF romance in it, is Becky Chambers A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. (A really great & heart-warming novel!)

A bunch of the late Anne McCaffrey's novels had a romance element, e.g. the Dragon/Pern novels as well as the Freedom series, which started with Freedom's Landing. To a lesser extent, so do Seanen McGuire's urban fantasy InCryptid novels.

Two novels with interesting AI/robot-human romances are He, She and It (Marge Piercy--won awards) and The Mad Scientist's Daughter (Cassandra Rose Clarke).

If MM romances are to your taste, K.J. Charles is definitely a great writer. A series with less explicit sex & less of a tilt to horror is Melissa Scott's Astrient novels. The series starts with Point of Hopes, which she co-authored with her late partner Lisa Barnett. C.L. Polk also writes great fantasies with queer romances, starting with Witchmark. G.L. Carriger's The 5th Gender is a sweet alien/human MM love story as well as a scifi mystery. Heather Rose Jones' Alpennia series is a lovely set of alternate history with magic stories that revolve around FF romances.

There are also lots of writers who do more formulaic work. Jayne Castle does romances in scifi settings. This is one of Jayne Ann Krentz's other pen names, so if your wife is a JAK fan, this might appeal.

[ilovereading.com]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Asking for a friend! hahaha

Seriously, my wife loves Romance novels. Johanna Lindsay being her favourite author and recently the "Misadventures" books being a guilty pleasure. To be clear, gushy Romance with a little hint of erotica rather than Erotica disguised as Romance is her thing.

The other night she was asking for suggestions of good Sci-Fi with Romance in it and I was at a complete loss.

Any suggestions?

Firstly, there is absolutely no reason why romance should be a 'guilty' pleasure as there is nothing to be guilty about.

Secondly, is your wife looking for romance books with a sci-fi element or sci-fi books with a romance element?

A few Sci-Fi Romance examples

Standalones
Murmuration by T.J. Klune
The Bones Beneath My Skin by T.J. Klune
The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole
Strange Love by Ann Aguirre
A Very Alien Christmas Tree by Charity Wells
Alpha by Tiya Rayne
The Kinsman Universe by Ilona Andrews

Series'
Adaptation Duet by Pepper Pace
Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon (series).
Condemned trilogy by Alison Aimes
Her Instruments series by M. C. A. Hogarth
Endeavor Series by Amanda Bouchet
London Steampunk Series - Bec McMaster
Parasol Protectorate series by Gai Carriger
The Iron Seas series Meljean Brook
These last three are all steampunk/paranormal crossovers


Sci-Fi with secondary/minor romance elements

The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway
The After Wife by Cass Hunter
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Lady Astronaut Series by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Broken Earth trilogy by N Jemisin
The Illuminae Files trilogy by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (YA but so much fun)

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by ilovereading.com

Firstly, there is absolutely no reason why romance should be a 'guilty' pleasure as there is nothing to be guilty about.

Not sure if you've read the entire thread but I have previously addressed this point....
"And I use the term "guilty pleasure" only in jest as it is such a common meme. My wife is quite open about her love of Romance novels."

Originally Posted by ilovereading.com

Secondly, is your wife looking for romance books with a sci-fi element or sci-fi books with a romance element?

More romance with sci-fi elements rather than the other way around.

Thank you for the suggestions, I'm sure a number will be added to her growing TBR list.

[ilovereading.com]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Not sure if you've read the entire thread but I have previously addressed this point....
"And I use the term "guilty pleasure" only in jest as it is such a common meme. My wife is quite open about her love of Romance novels."

More romance with sci-fi elements rather than the other way around.

Thank you for the suggestions, I'm sure a number will be added to her growing TBR list.

Ah cool. Admittedly I only skimmed through. Whilst romance is not my only genre, it is the one I tend to get defensive about given the still prevalent snobbery attached to it, especially as those opinions tend to be based on a knowledge of zero romance books, or a cherry-picked small selection of particularly bad entries in the genre.

I hope your wife finds some new titles to get immersed in.

PS I HIGHLY recommend the Lady Astronaut Series even if the romance is not the primary plot. It goes hand in hand with the original book that the movie Hidden Figures was based on. Also, anything by TJ Klune is incredible no matter what sub-genre he writes in.