Thanks for the advice on those authors. I might try another Iain M. Banks story sometime though Kevin J. Anderson is off my reading list.
I've just finished Ring by Stephen Baxter which I liked. However be prepared for alot of scientific terms and descriptions.

Starship Troopers - Heinlein
Voyage - Stephen Baxter - A very compelling alternate history of going to Mars using Saturn 5 technology
Footfall - Niven and Pournelle - An alien invasion but with plausible technologies
Kim Stanley Robinson - The Mars series - a trilogy of novels about the colonization of Mars
Ministry of Space - Warren Ellis - An alternate history graphic novel about early space exploration

FC

I'm reading one right now called "The Dark Beyond the Stars" by Frank M. Robinson, excellent.

Well, that book gave me a late night. HAD to stay up to finish it. Absolutely great.

That does look good, added to my Amazon wishlist.

The really strange thing about reading the book, is that it is about an amnesiac who discovers the truth about his identity through the course of the story. As I was reading I had a vague feeling of familiarity, then when got to the end a lot of it was very familiar, so apparently I read it before or part of it and forgot it, very strange parallel which added to the mood of the story, tee hee.

Just about to start reading Richard Matheson, I Am Legend.

I have listened to the good radio play version, and seen the various indifferent to atrocious films made. (based loosely upon... and usually completely missing what seems to have been the point).

I suspect that the text will be much more like the radio play which had some complexity, depth, poignancy and irony.

Over the weekend I finished The fall of Hyperion. I took my time reading this as I'm really enjoying the saga and wanted to absorb as much detail as I could. My only criticism of the series so far is the abrupt ending/beginning of each of the books.

Greg Bear; Eon, The Forge of God, both reminding me of Clarke's Childhood's End

I just finished Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card which was good and I'm into Speaker for the Dead now which I like better so far. I got the whole Ender series as a gift last year and just recently started into them.