[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Buffy

...

Real Doom fanatics go on-line and download toolkits that let them design new scenarios, new weapons, and new monsters. You haven't lived until you've killed Barney the dinosaur by firing frozen chickens at him,
Buffy

We did that with Wolfenstein! $2 shareware on a 3.5" floppy.

Oooopsss...got off topic.

Tormod, I searched the e-reader site for The Urantia Book, as that is the latest & greatest science fiction I have read; and that was decades ago. I guess legally it's not sci-fi, but it's got:

Originally Posted by Tormod

..real hard-core stuff! Deep space! High tech! Lost alien civilizations! Multiverses! Warped physics!

Plus angels, eugenics, love, death, war, yada yada yada. Sorry I can't be of more help; that's all I got.

[Jay-qu]

Have you read the Halo books T? If you liked the game story the books really expand on it - its a light read and the books arnt too long. I dont know if you can get them in ebook form.. One of the authors is Eric Nyland

[Drum]

This is a good site ..... At least I find it so ..... it has over 600 books listed ... but only around 50 free and some are difficult to navigate to ... some patience is required

Mathamatical Fiction

There are many Isaac Asimovs, but I find one of the best authors, if you like mind games, is Jorge Luis Borges .....

And his best story here is The Library of Babel .... a concept on infinity that will blow your mind

Originally Posted by Excerpt from the Library of Babel, by Jorge Luis Borges

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover all the sides except two; their height, which is the distance from floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeds that of a normal bookcase. One of the free sides leads to a narrow hallway which opens onto another gallery, identical to the first and to all the rest. To the left and right of the hallway there are two very small closets. In the first, one may sleep standing up; in the other, satisfy one's fecal necessities.

Also through here passes a spiral stairway, which sinks abysmally and soars upwards to remote distances. In the hallway there is a mirror which faithfully duplicates all appearances. Men usually infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite (if it were, why this illusory duplication?); I prefer to dream that its polished surfaces represent and promise the infinite ... Light is provided by some spherical fruit which bear the name of lamps. There are two, transversally placed, in each hexagon. The light they emit is insufficient, incessant.

Like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth; I have wandered in search of a book, perhaps the catalogue of catalogues; now that my eyes can hardly decipher what I write, I am preparing to die just a few leagues from the hexagon in which I was born. Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite. I say that the Library is unending. The idealists argue that the hexagonal rooms are a necessary form of absolute space or, at least, of our intuition of space.

They reason that a triangular or pentagonal room is inconceivable. (The mystics claim that their ecstasy reveals to them a circular chamber containing a great circular book, whose spine is continuous and which follows the complete circle of the walls; but their testimony is suspect; their words, obscure. This cyclical book is God.) Let it suffice now for me to repeat the classic dictum: The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible.

cool bananas ... Drum

[Tormod]

Brilliant link, Drum! Thanks.

BTW I am working my way through Dan Simmon's Ilium at the moment.

Jay-qu...I have not read the Halo books. I sort of stay away from franchise stuff...

[sanctus]

So far no mentioned him. but I'm sure you know: Orson Scott Card.

Otherwise you should read Ursula K. LeGuin as someone proposed and if you like cyber-punk Neal Stephenson is great (Snow Trash for an impressively quick boock or Diamond Age).

I do not know if his books have been translated (I read it in German) but in case Andreas Brandhorsts series in the kantaki universe is hardcore sciencefiction as you searched.

[Tormod]

I have read everything sci-fi from OSC, in the end it got tiring and repetitive...but the Ender Saga started out well. His fantasy stuff I shy away from.

Neal Stephenson is on my list above.

LeGuin is noted. I have read one or two by her but it was a long time ago.

[CraigD]

I just noticed T’s post #1 list is missing one of my “three B’s”: Baxter, Bear, and Brin.

I’ve not seen my favorite Brin (“Sundiver” and “Startide Rising”, both from the 1980s) in ebook form (alas, publishers being the greedy ludites they are, paper remains an inescapable medium for the serious scifi reader).

When confronted by space-opera fans with accusations like “sure, that hard-SF is good and all, but you can’t have a decent space-dogfight without shields, phasers, and spaceships with wings like WWII fighters!”, I steer them toward “Startide Rising” to disabuse them of that notion.

His 2002 “Kiln People”, available at ereader, while very enjoyable, was not the hard-as-… (well, perhaps not diamonds, but definitely as well-poured concrete) scifi by which he made his reputation. He still writes the ultra-hard kind, mostly short stories. I notice he appears at ereader in a 2003 anthology “The Hard SF Renaissance”… hmm, will have to check that out myself…

Another notable missing in this thread is Charles Stross. Though some wouldn’t class Stross as a scifi writer, hard or otherwise, but more of a niche fantasy / genre horror writer, IMHO one book alone qualifies him at least as highly as Stephenson: “Accelerando” (available free under a GPL in many formats, including palm DOC at accelerando.org, IMHO one of the best cyberpunk-ish, real[istic] physics novels ever written.

[Tormod]

Hah! I actually read Startide Rising about a year ago! Found it when I rummaged some forgotten boxes full of old paperbacks. Pretty good stuff. I also read Brin's book in the Asimov Foundation "trilogy" (what is it, ten books now?) and it was, uhm, "okay". A bit too much philosophizing for my liking.

Kiln People I was unable to complete.

Charles Stross is indeed missing from my list, I am almost up to date on him, the last one isn't available in digital yet so I have it on order from Amazon. I agree, he is a brilliant writer!