More like The Courageous

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Known SpaceUniverse
universe142 books1964
About aliens.
“Give a clever species a few centuries and a working fusion drive, and it will fill the sky with problems.”
from the catalogue
Start with Ringworld →
includes Ringworld, Fleet of Worlds, Man-Kzin Wars
CoDominiumUniverse
universe98 books1971
Military science fiction.
“The body of work runs along a few hard threads rather than one line.”
from the catalogue
Start with The Mote in God's Eye →
includes Moties, Falkenberg's Legion, War World, Laurie Jo Hansen
UpliftUniverse
universe13 books1980
About uplift and aliens.
“No species, the Galactics insist, ever climbs to sapience alone.”
from the catalogue
Start with Sundiver →
includes Uplift, Uplift Storm
HeecheeSeries
series19 books1972
completed
About aliens.
“The Heechee are an advanced alien race that visited the Solar System hundreds of millennia ago and then mysteriously disappeared.”
from the catalogue
Start with Gateway →
Humanx CommonwealthUniverse
universe39 books1972
About aliens.
“Two species that ought, by every buried instinct, to recoil from one another instead clasp hand to truhand and build a galaxy together.”
from the catalogue
Start with For Love of Mother-Not →
includes Pip & Flinx, Icerigger Trilogy, The Founding of the Commonwealth
Starman JonesNovel
Robert A. Heinleinstandalone novel1953
About coming of age, set in spaceship.
“Starman Jones, a 1953 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, features a farm boy who wants to go to the stars.”
from the catalogue