Hard science fiction

[nancylebov]

There isn't a lot of hard science fiction (and possibly less now than in previous years), and it doesn't have its own award.

I'm defining hard science fiction as stories which are dependent on science as it was known when the story was written.

In other words, I'm not going to insist that everything in the story be accurate science. I can live with ftl because I like alien planets.

I think the best (reasonably?) hard sf I've read lately is Stross' Saturn's Children. Any recommendations?

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

When I think of good recent hardish SF, I think of Ted Chiang and Peter Watts modulo lots of grim in the latter; if we are using definitions such that interesting alien worlds with reasonably solid science in count, have you read any Karl Schroeder ?

[dsrtao]

I'd vote for Schroeder -- especially _Lady of Mazes_.

I also have a biased candidate -- biased in that I was an early reader on it -- _Duplicate_, by Alex Feinman. http://alexfeinman.net/

And _Fragment_, by Warren Fahy. Quite hard, and lots of fun, if a bit scary.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Oh, to be clear, I think Karl Schroeder is absolutely brilliant, I was just unsure whether he fit the flavour of hard SF nancylebov is looking for; possibly the Virga books would be less good a fit for that than his first three.