Spaceship Stories

How many science fiction (sf) stories begin as a spaceship approaches, or has just reached, an unknown planet? Many entire series have existed on this basis, most obviously Star Trek. James Blish not only adapted Star Trek episodes as short stories but also, more importantly, wrote several original "spaceship stories," including the Cities In Flight Tetralogy, described by Charles Monteith of Faber and Faber, speaking at a Memorial Evening for James Blish, as "...in many ways, a higher and greater Star Trek."

Poul Anderson wrote every kind of sf, including "spaceship stories." I am currently contemplating the "bookends" of his History of Technic Civilization, i.e., the first four and last four works in the series:

"The Saturn Game"
"Wings of Victory"
"The Problem of Pain"
"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson"

"A Tragedy of Errors"
The Night Face
"The Sharing of Flesh"
"Starfog"

Seven spaceship stories and one, "How To be Ethnic...," about a young man still on Earth just beginning spacefarer training. These stories:

either precede or succeed the major historical processes of the series;

present space travelers' adventures in widely different spatial volumes and historical periods.

"The Saturn Game" takes place about 2055 in the outer Solar System whereas "Starfog" begins five thousand years later near the northern verge of another spiral arm and its action then moves to beyond the Dragon's Head Nebula where no one, except the mysterious Kirkasanters, has been before.

That, unfortunately, is as far as the Technic History takes us.