Nice, Service Model was my next one on deck. The synopsis looked super enjoyable, so now I’m excited 👍

I still think about Diamond Dogs every so often. Kind of gave me the same vibes as the movie, The Cube

I’ve read everything this man’s written; it’s all amazing. Obviously the revelation space series is the most well-known, which I can’t recommend highly enough. If you want to get a taste of that universe without committing to the series yet, Chasm City is really great standalone.

I just started the last book of the Final Architecture trilogy. Not as good as the Children of Time series imo, but still very good. Tchaikovsky is becoming one of those authors that I’ll probably read whatever he puts out (along with Alastair Reynolds).

Which of the standalones did you like the best?

Adrian gets the award for most science fiction author looking science fiction author.

I just finished A Drop of Corruption as well! I enjoyed the ride and am digging the biopunk setting. Although I feel like the leviathan threat was noticeably absent since it seems like a core trait of the worldbuilding.

Ana is an incredibly fun character to read, and Din makes a good straight man for a partner. I do think the author has leaned a little heavily into the whole Sherlock holmes bit already after only 2 books, but it hasn’t taken anything away from the story.

Extra points for the totally new genre of fantasy-biopunk-mystery-kaiju defense.

Another vote for Greg Egan. And I too really enjoyed the Children of Time series and anything written by Alastair Reynolds, although I don’t think the genre is exactly what you’re looking for. Finding modern, hard sci-fi really is pretty difficult.

I get where you’re coming from with KSR’s Mars series. I think Ministry for the Future was a better read, personally.

Also, I find that a lot of Crichton scratches similar itch to Andy Weir. Especially things like Andromeda Strain and Airframe.