Great book filled with lots of hard science for those interested in this subject. I'm always open to recommendations.
In that context, "The Stars are the Styx" by Theodore Sturgeon; "Ringworld" by Larry Niven; others probably can come up with more, I don't read fiction, science or otherwise. A FReeper of years gone by recommended James Hogan's "Inherit the Stars" which I tracked down and read (first fiction I'd read in 20 years at least, apart from a re-read of LOTR before the movies came out); Philip K. Dick (in my teens/twenties I read a couple of his novels, "Our Friends from Frolix Eight" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"; I read some of his short stories standing in Barnes and Noble about 25 years ago, including "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", the very loose basis for "Total Recall"); seems like I'm forgetting one.
Iain M Banks (passed) Culture series:
Consider Phlebas (1987)
The Player of Games (1988)
Use of Weapons (1990)
The State of the Art (1991) short culture fiction collections
Excession (1996)
Inversions (1998)
Look to Windward (2000)
Matter (2008).
Surface Detail (2010)
The Hydrogen Sonata (2012)
Non-Culture but excellent:
Against a Dark Background (1993)
The Algebraist (2004).
Gene Wolfe (passed) - the last great writer of the English language:
The Book of the New Sun
The Shadow of the Torturer (1980)
The Claw of the Conciliator (1981)
The Sword of the Lictor (1982)
The Citadel of the Autarch (1983)
The Book of the Long Sun
Nightside the Long Sun (1993)
Lake of the Long Sun (1994)
Caldé of the Long Sun (1994)
Exodus From the Long Sun (1996)
The Book of the Short Sun
On Blue’s Waters (1999)
In Green’s Jungles (2000
Return to the Whorl (2001)
The Urth of the New Sun (1987)
Many of the novels by both authors won or were nominated for awards
MORE very hard SF
Stephen Baxter
The Xeelee Series - not in order:
Raft
Timelike Infinity
Flux
Ring
Vacuum Diagrams
Making History & Reality Dust - a short novel,
Riding the Rock
Mayflower II
Destiny’s Children:
—Coalescent
—Exultant
—Transcendent
—Resplendent
Starfall
Gravity Dreams
Xeelee: Endurance
Xeelee: Vengeance
Xeelee: Redemption