Looking for hard sci fi works released over the past few years. Preferably works of substantial length, although an excellent read is an excellent read, regardless of length. Heck, feel free to make suggestions even if he book wasn’t released recently but it is still in print or easily obtainable used.
Peter F Hamilton you might already know. His imagination is incredible. Start with Pandora’s Star. His trilogy’s and sagas are very engrossing and a little bit weird at times.
I’ve been reading David Brin’s Uplift series lately. Some parts are a bit iffy, but he does a good job overall, especially in making all of the aliens weird, yet make sense.
Greg Egan’s work is pretty darn hard, and he’s still writing: “Clockwork Rocket” is fairly recent (and there are two sequels).
David Brin’s material is often pretty hard - a recent work by him is “Existence.”
Alastair Reynolds’ recent Poseidon’s Children trilogy is a remarkable look into the colonisation of the Solar System and the nearest stars. There are numerous intriguing ideas on every page, not least the emphasis on African and Asian spacefarers.
Stephen Baxter’s work is really good, too; here’s his bibliography
the Xeelee sequence is particularly recommended.
After seeing good reviews, I’ve started reading Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. It’s the first book in a space opera called The Expanse, and so far, I’m really enjoying it.
I recently finished and thoroughly enjoyed two different series by John C. Wright - The Golden Oecumene and Chronicles Of Chaos. The latter is more Fantasy than Sci-Fi, but as someone with more of a Sci-Fi bent I enjoyed them anyway.
I believe there is a SyFy series based on these novels, I think maybe it starts soon?
I flippin loved the first three books in this series. The next couple aren’t quite as good, IMO, but the first three? Some of the best space opera I’ve ever read.
Charles Wilson’s Spin is really excellent hard SF, although I think it’s about a decade old.
Blindsightby Peter Watts
Very good, and among the bleakest SF novels I’ve ever read, possibly up there with The Road (although much harder SF than The Road is). I could only make it about 100 pages into its sequel before I gave up.
I assume you’re aware of The Martian?
The Expanse premieres on Syfy on December 14. You can watch the first episode online at the Syfy website. (I haven’t watched yet, but I’m looking forward to it.)
I’ve been enjoying Ancillary Justice and the other books of the Radch Trilogy. Classic space opera told from the point of view of an AI which used to have thousands of bodies/eyes/remotes/systems/weapons under its control when it was a battleship but is then confined to an existence in one single human body.
Ian Douglas writes lots of hard sci-fi. Recently I’ve been reading his Star Carrier series.
Still hanging in there after over 20 years is David Weber’s space opera series on Honor Harrington, now up to 14 ‘mainline’ books and six ‘side-story’ novels along with story collections. weber can be an acquired taste (the man can go on and on some topics at times), but he does respect the laws of physics (mostly) and has perhaps the best-defined and most diverse human-only galactic culture I’ve seen. He’s supposed to finish the ‘arc’ by 2017, the 25th anniversary of the first book, but we’ll see…
Iain M Banks . He died recently ,but his space opera novels featuring the Culture were hard sf. The last two I read , * Surface Detail * and *The Algebraist * really blew my mind . All of his sf novels
are worth reading
I would not class the Culture books as hard.
I’ve been enjoying Sevenevens by Neal Stephenson. This system they have now where if you buy the Kindle book you can pay an upcharge for an audiobook that syncs with it has been working great for me, but it means I’ve been following the story piecemeal when I’m out on a walk or cleaning the kitchen. So far, I do think he’s chosen not to really deal with how apeshit people would really go if there were only two years left of life on earth and only a relative handful of people are being lifted up into the arc in the sky. But a likely telling of that aspect would story about what kind of scientific and technological possibilities could be brought to bear helping the species survive the disaster.