Reddit reviews All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries (The Murderbot Diaries (1))

Pretty sure 'MurderBot' has already been trademarked by Martha Wells.
Check it out. It's a great series..

https://www.amazon.com/All-Systems-Red-Murderbot-Diaries/dp/0765397536

This reminds me of a small scene in The Murderbot Diaries (which everyone should read tbh, they're on Amazon. I imagine if you like Eclipse Phase you'd probably like them).

The protagonist has a bunch of little micro surveillance drones that he's flying around, like fingernail sized things (as I interpreted it anyway) and he gets shot at by someone with an energy weapon. The drones all detect this and (a) try to get in the way of the laser shots, and (b) try hit the person shooting in the face.

Have a look at Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series. Space opera/MilSF, simple narratives.

Incidentally, if you use FTL, you can set the average speed and transit time to whatever is convenient to your narrative.

Excession by Iain Banks is a good look at a post scarcity interstellar society. It's also a good study in plotting and pacing. In a Banks novel you'll generally encounter complex narratives, factions gathering intelligence for most of the book and maneuvering into position, then a big action scene, then the factions regroup and then a big final action scene.

I think you should also look at Martha Wells' Murderbot series. This is a series of novellas, 40K words, but they are basically being marketed as novels, and readers are eating it up. Wells is killing it with this series, and you should study the overall form of the story and the writing style and tone/mood.

Readers are hungry for lighthearted SF now. Not necessarily humorous SF like the Hitchhiker's Guide, though humorous is also popular, but lighthearted enough so that the characters can crack a joke occasionally, or have some running banter in their dialogue. Murderbot is a killer android with a soft side.

I think readers are tired of the doom & gloom of post apoc, and right now the market responds to lighter fare. Other recent examples of this would be We are Legion (We are Bob) and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I hesitate in include these two, because I think they are both poorly written, but they are both lighthearted and are super popular right now.

I read the first books of both the Murderbot and the We Are Bob series last week. Both are great, and there are piles of sequels as well.

Over break: The Power by Naomi Alderman. Fabulously thought provoking, so I'm going to assign it to my incoming first year students next fall.

I'm sorry you paid so much for it, it's £2 on kindle edition here and even the hardcover is £10

I get that amazon is scummy, but this link sends money to charity, too.