Hard SF
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Unfortunately, hard SF is hard to find. There are only a handful of authors who have the technical knowledge to turn out a story where the science is at least more or less plausible. In my mind, Asimov largely failed, while Clarke's knowledge of physics seems to be limited to "astronautics", the application of Newtonian physics to spaceflight (although it must be said he did an excellent job at that). Even though the SF on offer today leaves much to be desired, the situation has improved, especially since Stephen Baxter entered the scene, not to mention Neal Stephenson. I recently "discovered" Greg Egan, although the one book by him that I read was somewhat deficient in narrative. Click on the names of the authors below to get to their websites.

Stephen Baxter used to be my absolute favorite (until he was dethroned when I started reading Stephenson). There is much variation in the types of stories he has written, and his ideas are highly original - but as is usual in science fiction, one shouldn't expect too much character development. Baxter loves alternative histories; a recurring theme is: what would have happened if the Germans had won WWI? Sometimes these alternative histories are combined with cosmologies that are now know to be false (and certainly known to be false by Baxter): what if the medieval worldview - the Earth at the center of a universe composed of crystal spheres on which the planets revolve - had been true true (as in a story in "Traces")? In particular, how would 20th century minds have responded to that? In "Anti-Ice": what if the British had had access to significant amounts of antimatter already in the 19th century? In "Voyage", Kennedy is shot but not killed in 1963, and convinces the US to follow up the Apollo program with manned Mars missions. In "Titan" almost the opposite happens: the American manned space program is shut down in the early 21st century. More alternative history is explored in "The Time Ships", a sequel to H.G. Wells's story "The Time Machine" (and I agree with Clarke that it's better than the original). Then there's the Xeelee series ("Vacuum Diagrams", "Timelike Infinity", "Raft",...), with speculations on the far future of humanity. In his "Manifold" series ("Manifold Space", "Manifold Time", "Origin", "Phase Space"), Baxter offers various "solutions" to Fermi's "paradox": if aliens exist, why don't we see them? (Personally I think there is no paradox at all, but that doesn't diminish the pleasure of reading the books.) Recently Baxter has embarked on a new series with "Coalescent".

Neal Stephenson. Technically perhaps not a science-fiction writer, but I'm including him anyway. I've read his "Cryptonomicon", as well as the "Baroque Cycle", a trilogy consisting of "Quicksilver", "The Confusion", and "The System of the World". Some criticism I've heard is that, like the more conventional science fiction writers, Stephenson also applies too broad a brush to his characters. However, it may be argued that the real characters of his stories aren't individuals but whole societies, and the latter are invariably painted in exquisite detail. "Cryptonomicon" flashes back an forth between the efforts by cryptographers such as Alan Turing during WWII to decipher German U-boat communications, and on the other hand a contemporary story to do with corporate espionage and much more. The book is rich in detail, and a lot of research has gone into it; on top of that, Stephenson's wit is unequalled. The same is true of the books in the "Baroque Cycle". These are set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and include such characters as Sir Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Robert Hooke, Samuel Pepys, and many more historical figures, sometimes hilariously portrayed - but here too it is obvious that much research went into the endeavor. Again there are multiple stories and multiple themes, including but not limited to the birth of "modern" science and the emergence of international finance.

Greg Egan. So far I have only read "Schild's ladder". The science is based on the assumption that a version of loop quantum gravity, stuff I've worked on, is the true theory of quantum gravity. (A funny detail: in the book planets are named after living scientists who in one way or another have made important contributions to the development of the theory.) Egan knows loop quantum gravity down to the details; the "spin network states" that play an important role in it are explained mathematically on his website.



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