For what it's worth, and this is perhaps super light spoilers for the whole series, the "bleak hopeless future" is not a running theme for the series. The auth

For what it's worth, and this is perhaps super light spoilers for the whole series, the "bleak hopeless future" is not a running theme for the series. The authors have said they approached each book in the style of the characters and story they were telling at that time. The first book is a noir detective novel (that happens to be set in space and in the future) so I can definitely see how it comes across as bleak.. The next book and beyond are written in different styles. Thanks for the Schimatrix recommendation! I'd never heard of it, and I looked it up.. Added it to my reading list! I might recommend The Inverted Frontier series by Linda Nagata to you, that I've only just started... It's pretty good and I think falls under the hopeful sci-fi category (at least so far). :-)