Yup; as you no doubt guessed, that’s where I got my username.
Every year, Gardner Dozois publishes “The Year’s Best Science Fiction”. Be careful to get his as there are several other yearly compilations with similar titles. IMO it is always over 80% good stuff.
It is all short stories (and often a novella or two) from the top current SF authors. He also includes a Summation of the Year where he reviews films, magazines, novels and everything SF. It makes for a great guide of what is going on on SF. Also a good way to see if you like a particular author before you commit to his novels.
Has anyone read any Vernor Vinge novels? I’ve been borrowing a book of his shirt stories. Some of them have some interesing ideas, though he seems to end them too quickly and not really write the difficult parts. To my shame though I haven’t been readnig much fiction for some time so it may all seem good to me after so long.
Yes. Right now I’m reading Rainbows End by him. He has some excellent novels out. I don’t think that you’ll find them too easy.
Good stuff. A Fire Upon The Deep is very good, if somewhat depressing; I never read the prequal.
The Peace War and even more so it’s sequal Marooned in Real Time are very good.
These are all from the 80’s though, so I’m not sure if they qualify as “recent” re the OP.
I haven’t read Iain M Banks. but my favorite recent SF has been:
Wen Spencer’s Ukiah Oregon novels
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden Universe series, as well as The Tomorrow Log by the same authors (it’s sequel is coming out next year bounces excitedly)
Hmmm. I think that’s it.
My picks:
S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse:
Dies The Fire
The Protector’s War
A Meeting At Corvallis
David Weber’s & John Ringo’s Empire of Man series:
March Upcountry
March To The Sea
March To The Stars
We Few
John Ringo’s Legacy of the Aldenata series:
A Hymm Before Battle
Gust Front
When The Devil Dances
Hell’s Faire
plus some more I haven’t read yet…
Eric Flint’s 1632 series
Anything about Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars
Another nod to the Belisarius series, and just about anything from David Drake.
And yet another nod to Weber’s Honor Harrington series.
Walter Jon Williams has some really good stuff. Some of his earlier things were pretty much cyberpunk, like Voice of the Whirlwind and Hardwired. Aristoi has some mindbending ideas in a well-done plot that’s really hard to categorize. You can’t say it’s “about _____” because there’s so much stuff there and it’s all really interesting and provocative. His most recent book that I’ve read is Dread Empire’s Fall which is the first of a series about an alien empire called the Praxis that incorporated humanity into it long ago. I haven’t had the pleasure of reading Banks’ books, but from what I’ve heard his universe sounds a bit like this.
John Varley is also highly recommended. My personal favorites are The Persistence of Vision and Steel Beach. He had a trilogy, beginning with Titan about a biological “ringworld” that was pretty darn good at the beginning and got a bit sillier as time went on. It’s still worth reading though.
Greg Bear is good too. The Forge of God gives a realistic way to destroy the earth, assuming you’re an advanced alien race. Blood Music won both the Nebula and Hugo awards and is one of the trippier books about bioscience and nanotech I’ve read. Darwin’s Radio actually has a lot of real life cutting-edge biology mixed in with a pretty interesting story about the future of human evolution, or at least a fictional future designed by Bear. (I want a kid who can speak three languages at once and communicates partially through photophores too, darn it.)
C.J. Cherryh is another one of my favorites. Her Union-Alliance books are relatively hard SF and involve the decline of Terra against her own colony worlds when technical advances make interstellar navigation easier and faster than it was before. One of the first, and one that got a Hugo, is Downbelow Station. Cherryh is really good about putting you in the head of the character, writing in a semi-stream of consciousness style. I find I sometimes have to be in the right mood to read her stuff, but I always like the fact that there are no easy answers or situations for her characters. Consequences are very real for them. I would recommend just about anything concerning that universe if you like your SF with a decent hard edge.
Pandoras star and Judas unchained is his most recent combo , which has the most imaginative means of space travel that I have read in a long time. I loved both, but most reviews that I have read, are not the most forgiving.
Pushing Ice is his latest, along with Century Rain and Redemption Ark, he seems to write sci/fi with a noir feel to it
If its the one with Black aliens , uggh , i guess it has its place but not my cup of tea
Ben Bova has not been mentioned, but I could not place the age of the books. Mostly deals with a time frame similar to Allen Steele, but keeps to the bigger picture with space colonization for the solar system.
Declan
’
World War Z by Max Brooks. Sure, this one is usually tagged as an alternative (or counterfactual) history, but since it’s all about putting down a zombie uprising, it ain’t exactly your grandfather’s “what if Hitler hadn’t invaded the USSR?” alt-history. I just finished it last night and it’s a helluva read.
Although, since it does take the question of zombies very seriously, I suppose it doesn’t qualify as “hard” (realistic, plausible) sci-fi. 
I almost recommended this one; the rediscovery of ancient technology and combat techniques makes it worth it alone. The end sort of petered out for me so I guess I’m holding a grudge.
I couldn’t agree more! I’ll second this selection. I need to pick up Calley’s War from this one. Like the Honerverse this one has some great offshoots.
Ooh! Ooh! The Foreigner Universe series by Cherryh is good, too. At least, the first one, Foreigner, is good.
Also, while nominally Alliance-Union, the Chanur novels are rather separate in scope, and also v. good.
I knew I’d have to defend that selection. There’s a couple of reasons I included it, the biggie being that most your basic W.o.W. story breaks down when it comes to why. It’s never mentioned in the original. If Footfall has a reason, I can’t remember it. Independence Day throws one in as an afterthought but that one breaks down on examination. To steal our resources, please, everything down here is already heavily abundant in the solar system; the only reason to takes ours is thoroughness.
Spoilerish:
The xenophobia/slavery makes for a consistent if repulsive reason. Further the alien’s pettiness, all the more outrageous because it’s not revealed immediately. When the aliens kill the first few politicians, you have no idea why. The struggle that the humans go through learning to trust each other is again, more realistic. In the Tom Cruise W.o.W. movie, the only scene where I’m not actively rooting for the aliens is the basement scene with the nut. It seems to be human nature that no matter how crappy things are there’s someone ready and willing to make things just a little worst.
The story is a little depressing sure, but the ending is very hopeful.
Paksenarrion is the protagonist in Elizabeth Moon’s first series. Poor farmer’s daughter, suffers a lot, makes good, etc. It was pretty formulaic. I kind of wondered if she did a similar thing only set in space.
A bioweapon was released that seemed likely to destroy their ecosystem, so they pooled their racial resources to build an Ark, in case the homeworld perished. The Fithp opened with an attack because it never occurred to them not to; that’s how things are done. You attack, and if you win you are in charge, if you lose you get high status for being tough to beat.
I’ve heard it compared to the Planet Pirates series she co-wrote, but with fewer constraints on how she wrote it ( due to having co-authors ). Not much like the Paksenarrion books.
Some of my favorites, a few of which are newer than others:
George R.R. Martin, Tuf Voyaging or Sandkings
Peter F. Hamilton, The Neutronium Alchemist series (very big, but worth it)
Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End, 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God’s Eye
Isaac Asimov, I, Robot or The Robots of Dawn
Do you like ST:TNG? Just about any Peter David book is worth a read, but I’m particularly fond of Q-in-Law and Imzadi. Diane Duane’s *Dark Mirror * is also excellent.
And also a vote for Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Starship Troopers.
Aren’t we stretching the definition of “recent” just a little bit?
Or a whole tremendous lots until it snaps?
Thanks for all the advice I just brought Altered Carbon and The Carpet Makers for holiday trip home. (looking at the state of Heathrow it doesn’t look like I’ll have any shortage of time to read them ).
James Alan Gardner Expendable series. Great space opera with a twist, the latter ones are quite clever and funny.
And Julie Czerneda species imperative series Survival and check out her older stuff too. Found this in Toronto (why don’t we get more foreign, even though Canada is right next door, authors in the us bookstores?)
I kinda blew through this thread, but has anyone mentioned Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. I read it a few months ago a loved it. Gonna keep an eye on this author.