Since I was a kid I've been a fan of
C. J. Cherryh. I've never been a big fan of her fantasy books (or any fantasy books really), mostly just hard sci-fi, I love all of her stories in the Union-Alliance world and have read most of them 2 or 3 times.
Cyteen was the first of her books that I read, I quickly consumed the other 2 in this trilogy. Well worth it.
Downbelow Station was probably my favorite though.
The Reality Dysfunction series is really good. Fair warning though, it continues through the
The Neutronium Alchemist series and into
The Naked God series. Had I realized that the first book of this trilogy, was actually the beginning of a three trilogy trilogy adding up to something around 5500 pages, I probably would not have read it. Once I started though, I read them all one right after the other, and I gotta say, someday I'll read them again. Definitely worth it. Creative as hell, and he keeps the story lines moving. Partly due to the length and partly due to the story, I felt a little insane having read it. Hmm, how many on my bookshelf until there's an opening?
After reading all of that, I looked for other work by
Peter F. Hamilton and found
Pandora's Star.
That was a good read. This guy must be insane, cause his idea's are some of the more unique and interesting.
Ever bought an album, and thought it was so good that you didn't want to buy anything else by that artist, afraid that it would change the perfection you see in their original work? That's how I feel about
A Fire Upon the Deep. As soon as I finished it, I went out and bought
A Deepness in the Sky and I still haven't read it.
Ok, a grand total of none of them are short stories. I pick up the Asimov mag and some of the others for short stories. Iain M. Banks looks interesting, I think I'll look him up when I finish my present series,
Titan which is pretty good so far, but I'm only about half way through the first book. Thanks for the suggestions, I'm always looking for new authors to read
