At least he exclusively wrote the entire 2000 series of books. I've only read the first two though. One day I'll get to 2061 and 3001.

Don't bother. 2061 was really not good and I didn't even consider 3001 which I've heard ruins the whole series. 2001 and 2010 were incredible books I could barely put down. I read those in 3 days total. 2061 I endured and read quickly to get it over with.

Ditto, pretty much, except I did read 3001, and yeah, it was a big disappointment for me.

Thanks for the recommendations. It seems that a lot of sci-fi novel series tend to degrade in quality with subsequent books.

That happened with me with the Dune novels by Frank Herbert. I think the first 4 are fantastic but the last 2 were a bit of a bore.

Lemme see.. Some other authors for you all:

Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap (all his other books rocks too)
Charles R. Pellegrino and George Zebrowski - The Killing Star (probably only found in used bookstores). A book that makes you really sit and think of the issues raised.
Steven Donaldson - The Gap Series. One of the most twisted, and evil series ever written.
Jerry Pournelle - Falkenberg's Legion (and followup books)
Larry Niven - Ringworld (tho I didn't like the followups that well)

Øystein

I thought the Alastair Reynolds novels were among the best of recent publications, along with the Charles Stross and the Peter Hamilton novels. Robert Sawyer can be compeeling as well.

Stanislaw Lem. Read him. Be him. Love him. Laugh your can off.

Can`t add anything new to the list, as my favourites are already listed.

I`m a huge fan of Iain Banks (love his culture universe) and I think I have read every book from Asimov and Clarke.

Some of the novels of Timothy Zahn in the SW series were good too, IMO the best author writing SW.

I have to agree here. His "Heir to the Empire" trilogy is still considered by many fans to be the best SW novels.

I think my favorites may have been "The Black Fleet Crisis" trilogy, by Michael P Kube-McDowell. But HTTE was very good, Grand Admiral Thrawn may have been the most interesting character introduced in the Expanded Universe.