The Fantasy Review’s list of 5 Hard Science Fiction Books with Detailed Worlds.
Children of Time (Children of Time, #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
From the blurb:
Who will inherit this new Earth?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age — a world terraformed and prepared for human life…
Diaspora by Greg Egan
From the blurb:
Since the Introdus in the twenty-first century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Others opted for gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Many of these have left the solar system forever in fusion-drive starships…
The Prefect / Aurora Rising (Prefect Dreyfus Emergency, #1) by Alastair Reynolds
From the blurb:
Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds.
His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that leaves nine hundred people dead. But his investigation uncovers something far more serious than mass slaughter — a covert plot by an enigmatic entity who seeks nothing less than total control of the Glitter Band…
The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
From the blurb:
Renowned structural engineer Dr. Vannevar Morgan seeks to link Earth to the stars by constructing a space elevator that will connect to an orbiting satellite 22,300 miles from the planet’s surface. The elevator would lift interstellar spaceships into orbit without the need of rockets to blast through the Earth’s atmosphere—making space travel easier and more cost-effective…
Saturn Run by John Sandford
From the blurb:
In 2066, a Caltech intern notices an anomaly from a space telescope—something is approaching Saturn, and decelerating. Space objects don’t decelerate. Spaceships do…
A flurry of top-level government meetings produce the inescapable conclusion: Whatever built the ship is at least one hundred years ahead of our technology, and whoever can get their hands on it will have an advantage so large, no other nation can compete…
