Nice list but I would definitely include among contemporaries:
- Dan Simmon's "Hyperion" as suggested already
- Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" - this is absolutely an amazing book for anyone familiar with geek culture and the interplay of academia and industry
- anything by Iain Banks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks). "Excession" (http://www.amazon.com/Excession-Bantam-Spectra-Book-Banks/dp...) is good, but the culture series in general is very nice literate approach to imagining a post-singularity scifi future that manages to combine deep psychological characters with wacky dark humour, lots of space opera action that is fresh every time and, most of all the ship names... of the ship names are just amazingly ... just go and read it already
- in fantasy (or, dark fantasy, perhaps) genre Joe Abercrombie's "First law" trilogy is an gut wrenchingly entertaining trope-twisting joyride, starting from "The Blade Itself" http://www.amazon.com/The-Blade-Itself-First-Law/dp/15910259... that is worth reading for the hilarious character development (or degeneration?) alone.
- Vernor Vinges "A deepness in the sky"(http://www.amazon.com/A-Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/081253...) is presented as a hard-scifi space opera but actually manages to be a witty commentary on the state of software engineering now and thousands of years into the future, usage of human intellect in the "mechanical turk" fashion in systems engineering and the potential of 'smart dust'. Almost made me want to start learning Erlang :)
- Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" - this is absolutely an amazing book for anyone familiar with geek culture and the interplay of academia and industry
- anything by Iain Banks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks). "Excession" (http://www.amazon.com/Excession-Bantam-Spectra-Book-Banks/dp...) is good, but the culture series in general is very nice literate approach to imagining a post-singularity scifi future that manages to combine deep psychological characters with wacky dark humour, lots of space opera action that is fresh every time and, most of all the ship names... of the ship names are just amazingly ... just go and read it already
- in fantasy (or, dark fantasy, perhaps) genre Joe Abercrombie's "First law" trilogy is an gut wrenchingly entertaining trope-twisting joyride, starting from "The Blade Itself" http://www.amazon.com/The-Blade-Itself-First-Law/dp/15910259... that is worth reading for the hilarious character development (or degeneration?) alone.
- Vernor Vinges "A deepness in the sky"(http://www.amazon.com/A-Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/081253...) is presented as a hard-scifi space opera but actually manages to be a witty commentary on the state of software engineering now and thousands of years into the future, usage of human intellect in the "mechanical turk" fashion in systems engineering and the potential of 'smart dust'. Almost made me want to start learning Erlang :)