Michael Flynn wiki link. He’s described as a “hard” SF writer. I don’t like hard SF but I really liked his River of Stars trilogy. One of my favorite books is Eifelheim, about aliens in a Bavarian village in the 14th century.
sffworld.com is an excellent resource for recommendations and reviews.
Peter F. Hamilton. Definitely. (oops I see you tried already. Ah well)
Your tastes seem pretty level with mine, so I would definitely recommend China Miéville. Kraken, Perdido Street Station and Embassytown are IMO his three best, in that order.
None of them are galactic space operas, but I think you’d like them just the same.
I came in to recommend this. Very good writing, doesn’t try to do more than tell a broad adventure story with sympathetic heroes and despicable villains. A good portrait of humanity on the verge of interstellar travel. ETA: definitely read the first book first: Leviathan Wakes.
I’ll second/third the Alistair Reynolds recommendation as well as Spin by Wilson.
There’s a new book by Ann Leckie called Ancillary Justice which has a lot of buzz and positive feedback so far.
As far as something different, I enjoy the Tobias Buckell Xenowealth series (first book is Crystal Rain). This ends up being space opera but the hard sci-fi parts are done very well.
For true space opera, I enjoy Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden Universe and the Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan series.
For fantasy, have you tried Terry Pratchett?
If you haven’t read Bujold then I would read those first; they are wonderful!
Definitely; I didn’t mean to imply you should just skip the first two.
Baxter’s latest, co-written with Terry Pratchett, is worth a read: The Long Earth.
You may also like KSR’s 2312… but I would check this one out of the library or buy it secondhand.
And I will add that if you haven’t yet read In Conquest Born by C. S. Friedman, ignore the cheesy cover and get thee to thy bookshop posthaste!
Have you tried Brin’s Uplift Saga? It has all of this, in spades. You can maybe skip Sundiver, but from Startide Rising onwards, it’s great.
Really? You think Perdido Street Station is better than Embassytown? Both are good stories, but I felt the actual writing in Perdido was a bit clunky. I found myself noticing how often people spoke, roared, grumbled, moaned, bellowed, etc.; that is, I was noticing the structure of the story as well as the plot. That’s like seeing the stagehands during a play. It’s not great writing if you can see the bones.
That said, I came here to post Mieville - brilliant writer, whose craft improves much in the later novels.
On the fantasy side, you might like Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series. It’s a cross between a police thriller and Harry Potter.
Also on the fantasy side. The Rook by Daniel O’Malley is a great modern fantasy; well written, interesting universe (modern England).
I also like Will Wight’s Traveler’s Gate series, which has decent writing, an interesting magic system and very good characterization. The Travelers of Valinhall are just plain cool, even the crazy ones. Maybe especially the crazy ones.
With two recommendations, Jonathan Strange and Mrs. Norrell has gone to the top of my “to check out” list. I’ll look at the others too, but there are so many ways a story about a noir robot detective can go wrong. (I’m also a fan of detective novels.)
Been watching the TV series, it’s the BEST THING EVAH and avoiding the books because I want to be surprised by plot developments (can you say, “Red Wedding?”). But I’ll prolly pick up book one, one of these days.
Have checked out Revelation Space, looks delicious, on my list. Though the vaguely religious sounding titles kinda bother me, as I don’t really like religious, mystical or occult elements as a central part of a science fiction story.
Checked out Vast. Tasty! I’ll check out the rest too.
I’ve read some Walter John Williams, “Queen of Angels” was pretty damn good. I didn’t know he’d done a space opera.
Pournelle kinda soured me on team-ups with Niven. I feel that works by Pournelle and Niven are just not as well written as books by Niven alone. In fact, I feel that Niven was made a lesser writer subsequently by his team-up with Pournelle (are you getting the Jerry non-love here?) Might be different with Lerner, I’ll check it out.
As an old SF hand, I can totally ignore the cheesy cover, though in fact, I kinda like them. Part of the genre. Though to be fair, my favorite cover artists, Richard Powers and Frazetta, get all kinds of cred.
I’ll check them all out and go for the one that looks tastiest, if I like them.