The canon: CJ Cherryh's Union/Alliance universe.

What: From the first forays through Earth's system, to worlds unimaginable. Space opera and aliens and pitched battles in the deep. Includes a world where abandoned colonists bond with telepathic 'horses', and another where the deliberately abandoned clones live side by side with giant, thinking lizard-dinosaur natives, and another 'verse where only one human is allowed to live with, and speak with (and for) the alien civilization that they crash-landed into.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Cherryh_bibliography#The_Alliance-Union_universe

Where: Mostly in libraries and bookstores. Used bookstores for some of the older works. Dozens of books. Like...dozens.

Quick pitch: Everything you love about action, adventure, and discovery quests......in spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!!!

More: Not only top-notch writing, but engaging women characters, seriously-thought-out and plausible alien worlds, smart science, a lack of gratuitous romance, some truly thought provoking (and horror-adjacent) stretching of scientific ethics and experimentation. Really clever and plausible societies and evolution of humanity. Thought-provoking and emotion-producing writing. SPACE! in grungy, amazing glory without dystopian pitfalls.