[Fnorgby]

I'm desperate for leads on current, original authors who are writing good SF.
First, a quick rant:

<rant>I'm sick to death of reading series fiction, and even more so of seeing classics (dune, rama, foundation etc) dragged out to absurdity. They were great ideas. Time to move on. Wrote a good book did you? Go for the trilogy. Then move ON. It's called reinventing yourself and being original.</rant>

Thank you. Now. I've read & liked Linda Nagata, Greg Bear, Greg Egan, a few others. I've lurked here for a while & picked up some names (russell, reynolds, morgan). I've read plenty of herbert, pournelle, brin, moorcock, cherryh, anthony, asimov, leguin, zelazny, delany, pohl, bova, lem, heinlein, clarke, silverberg, haldeman, etc, etc, etc.

I'm interested to hear your favorite *recent* hard SF authors & what stands out about them.

[Llama]

You list a lot of folk, but you leave out the cyberpunk writers, like Gibson and Sterling. Sterling's SCHISMATRIX is a classic and his other "near-future" books like DISTRACION and ZEITGEIST are excellent as well.

Iain Banks and Ken MacLeod are some of the best folk writing today. What's interesting about them? Ideas.

And then there's also Richard Calder and his DEAD THINGS trilogy. And Paul di Filippo's RIBOFUNK and other books.

[Jack Burton]

HMMMMM...haven't really read any true sci/fi lately...except if call Stephen King's Dreamcatcher sci-fi???? Last book I read was KW Jeter's Noir...fascinating plot..a little intelectually dense for me, but a good ead none the less if you are looking for a fairly original piece of work!

[Orbital]

Well I hear that Stephen Baxter is quite good for hard SF.

[Hobbit]

For 'hard' SF - James Morrow (Marrow), Stephen Baxter (Xeelee sequence, Manifold sequence), Alastair Reynolds (Chasm City, Revelation Space, Redemption Ark), Peter F Hamilton (Night's Dawn sequence), Iain M Banks (Culture series), Ken MacLeod (Engines of Light) , and Richard Morgan (Altered Carbon). Try also Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Arabesk series).

[Orbital]

Also Robert J Sawyer, Calculating God, Flashforward, Golden Fleece and his latest Hominoids.

[Fnorgby]

Cool. You guys are great. Some comments:

Llama: Ack! I left out some of the best. I loved 'em both, but Sterling lost me with the Difference Engine. Gibson lost me with Idoru (what the unholy <bleep> WAS that?). We both left out Neal Stephenson (sort of neo-cyberpunk -- or more recently cypher-punk (bad pun)), who starts off great but couldn't write an ending to save his life.

Many thanks for Banks, MacLeod, Calder, Filippo leads. I'll check them out.

Burton: King lost me aeons ago. Probably with "It" or "Talisman". "Original" is what I'm looking for, so thanks for Jeter.

Orbital: Right on target. Baxter's done some great stuff. I've read two or three of his. And thanks for Sawyer.

Hobbit: Morrow I haven't read, thanks. Reynold and Morgan sound great (picked up by lurking).

Thanks mucho folks. This will keep me busy thru the summer. RIght now I'm reading something called "Big Empty" by James Luceno. It appears to be something of a cautionary tale about the difference between human and machine intelligence set way in the future, & has some cyborg/hybrids thrown in for good measure. Weird, but original at least.

[Kamakhya]

I really enjoyed The Collapsium by Wil McCarthy. It's a far distant future based novel with a humorous twist.

[fortytwo]

Salt and On by Adam Roberts, I enjoyed both those stories,and I think he qualifies as a new author.

PS. I think Marrow was written by Robert Reed.

[Hobbit]

Whoops!
Thank you, 42 - it is Robert Reed.

James Morrow wrote 'this Is The Way the World Ends'. Don't ask me why I confused the two - it was late and I'd had a busy day! :o