Bear and Brin are excellent.
Now, I hardly ever read fiction any more, especially science fiction. I'm reminded of the famous comment by Ray Bradbury when asked by a reporter why he wrote SF when 90% of it was crap. "Yes" replied Ray "but 90% of
everything is crap."
How true.
In the SF genre I would say Brin's "Uplift" books are amongst the good stuff. Bear is quite good too. One of the best though, in my humble opinion, is still William Gibson.
Another
excellent book is
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Mind boggingly entertaining. Talk about big ideas...
I don't like Hamilton's stuff though. Can't remember his full name, but he wrote a cross genre SF-horror trilogy. Good idea, but poor dialogue. Speaking of poor dialogue, I think this is the bane/weakness of most SF writers. There really are very few writers who can write believable dialogue; SF or not.
Well, that's the end of my rant!
Mr Mephisto
PS - Pick up some non-fiction. Feed your brain, increase your knowledge and broadened your horizons. Start with something by Richard Dawkins, Studs Terkel, Shelby Foote, Simon Schama, Oliver Sachs...
