The Sci-Fi Problem

 I love science fiction, but I hardly ever read any science fiction books. In the 90s, I read a lot of Star Wars books and that seemed to fill in the need for reading science fiction. The 90s had a lot of great science fiction and fantasy tv shows that spilled over into the early 2000s - Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Stargate, Babylon 5, Buffy, Hercules; The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Files, and largely forgotten shows like Space Precient, Space: Above and Beyond, Dark Skies and The Outer Limits. I watched all of these shows along side reading Star Wars books, but I never really got into the habit of reading science fiction which didn't have a movie or tv show connection. There is one oddity in that, the Deathstalker series by Simon R. Green, which I enjoyed, and I listened to the whole series apart from Deathstalker: Prelude and the sequel trilogy on audible a couple of years ago. I have read some Timothy Zahn books - Quadrail, the Conqueror's Trilogy, The Green and the Grey and I'm currently working my way through the Icarus Saga, starting with a reread of the Icarus Hunt last summer as it had been a long while since I read the Icarus Hunt and I wanted to refresh my memory of it before I started reading the Icarus Plot. 

 However, apart from Deathstalker and Timothy Zahn, I've not really read any sci-fi that has not been a book adaptation or tie-in of a movie or tv series. Part of this problem I believe is exposure - when I go book shopping there is usually a lot of fantasy books in the shop and they have always drawn my eye, but there is usually very little science fiction to choose from on the shelves. Most of the authors who have written Star Wars books rarely get published in the UK, so you have to go to a speacilist shop that imports them from the US/Canada, or you have to buy them online, and even that is sometimes a problem because there are very few sellers who supply the UK. Another reason I've noticed is that a lot people on blogs and youtube read mainly fantasy themselves so I don't know what is out there and I don't know if a book will appeal to me as I'm not aware of it. 

I do know the type of science fiction that I DO like - I like space opera, sci-fi that is similiar to Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5 and more light hearted stuff like Stargate. I discovered Adrian Tchaikovsky through the fantasy series Echoes of the Fall, which appealed to me because the characters in it are animal shapeshifters, but not in the usual urban fantasy/horror trope, and I quite enjoyed them. I also discovered that the author himself is a zoologist so anything that explores natural history and animal behavour is something that interests me. One of my goals this year is to get into science fiction more than I have done in the past, so I am looking for recommendations.