Looking for new SF visionaries

[salam]

Hi
I used to be a huge SF fan years ago but lost interest in the genre and have not read anything for while except a Philip K. Dick novel here and there.

What I am hoping will bring me back is a recommendation from you guys to read something that would feel as exhilarating as reading the early William Gibson books. Books which not only were killer stories but felt like they were mapping the way towards something on the verge of happening and giving you the words and images to describe and even prepare you for a new paradigm shift and technology. I am talking here about the 'Sprawl Trilogy' or 'Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge' - actually on a side note it would be fun to look at which of Mondo 2000's predictions turned out to be totally off the mark.... but I digress.

So, I am assuming that many of you have followed new SF writing more than I have been and hope you could help me get back the rush and excitement I used to get while reading a really good Science Fiction novel.

Thanks

Salam

[dragoncd]

If I could encapsulate that feeling; it would be when I read Alastair Reynolds "space opera" science fiction books. He wrote a trilogy -

Revelation Space
Redemption Ark
Absolution Gap

But also has Chasm City which is sort of an ancillary tale to the trilogy (and could be read between books 1 and 2. He also has Pushing Ice and Century Rain as stand alone books.

Fantastic work, huge in scope and intricate in detail, the books will wrap you up in the world.

[Phil Connors]

I would recommend any of Peter F.Hamilton's stuff - the Nightsdawn trilogy or the Commonwealth Saga - his tech is just utterly brilliant. His ideas just come across as...plausible, if that makes any sense. Of course some of the stuff is totally out there, but his confidence and ability to ground his inventions in a kind of contextual reality really sell them as believable. Greg Bear's Eon is also a phenomenal read.

[Archren]

Accelerando by Charles Stross was the most recent bleeding-edge sf that I can think of.

[gpackin]

The Manifold series by Stephen Baxter is pretty good. I'm just about done the second book of the series.

[Hobbit]

Having enjoyed most of the above, this is a more difficult one to answer than I first thought.

Something as radically new and cutting edge as Gibson was on the release of Neuromancer?

Reynolds, Hamilton, Baxter, Morgan are all good, but not as cutting edge now as Gibson was at the time of Neuromancer's first release. What they do is take old SF standards and upgrade them to now. As I said, good, but not entirely cutting edge.

Stross is the nearest, I would say; more interesting in a way because Charlie's mixing his genres - he writes Sf and Fantasy and Horror and alternate history.... though not all in the same book.

We're really looking for stuff new and innovative here, hard SF using current scientific thinking (Yes, I know the names mentioned above do too, but I'm trying to think really new.)

How about Karl Schroeder or Peter Watts? If you're looking at SF, then I would say they're going places others haven't. Ted Chiang is a rarity in that he only publishes short story SF. Vernor Vinge perhaps? (Unusual that one, though his recent stuff on the Singularity may be there.) Paul MacAuley? Robert Reed?

Hobbit

[Phelann]

If I could encapsulate that feeling; it would be when I read Alastair Reynolds "space opera" science fiction books. He wrote a trilogy -

Revelation Space
Redemption Ark
Absolution Gap

But also has Chasm City which is sort of an ancillary tale to the trilogy (and could be read between books 1 and 2. He also has Pushing Ice and Century Rain as stand alone books.

Fantastic work, huge in scope and intricate in detail, the books will wrap you up in the world.

I second, triple, and quadruple this post.