Science fiction stories with aliens must find a way to pass through space. The distance between planets is overwhelmingly large. There are only three possibilities to conquer that void.

Time: we merely have 100 years per life and therefore we can't reach much further than 10 Ly. We can only extend that radius by involving more than one human generation. That would be the only solution that conforms to #hardscifi criteria.

Speed: Using scifi tricks, we could break through the barrier of light speed and thus shorten the journeys. However, these tricks demand some thinking. You don't want to have Einstein's laws in the way.

Manipulation: Even more sophisticated tricks allow us to bend space as we want to and thus bring those far away worlds nearer to us.

Simply speaking there are space odysseys with or without tricks. The type of the resulting stories is fundamentally different though.