Nowadays I don’t really have any authors or book series like this. As I kid I used to get really excited for a new Series of Unfortunate Events or Alex Rider book. For a while I kept my eye on Adrian Tchaikovsky, but lately I’ve found some of his novels to be hit or miss.
The only book release I’m currently looking forward to is Brigands & Breadknives in the Legends & Lattes series by Travis Baldree. The other two books have been cosy and wholesome, and it’s become a little tradition of mine to read these books around Christmas.
That are no longer alive, PTerry. Thst period he did two books a year plus extra stuff was golden.
That I no longer trust, King, Barker.
That I still pre order, Sanderson and Stephenson.
I love some of Neal Stephenson’s novels, though I haven’t read any of his more recent work. Are they still good?
Really enjoyed Seveneves. I call it a very verbose The Martian in that it is a near future thought experiment on what would happen if the moon explodes (literally the first sentence). Gets pretty deep in some of the science as NS is wont to do.
He got a lot more near future and current possibilities rather than his more esoteric earlier works. I think hes been quite on the money with a lot of predictions as hes predicted things like needing someone to filter out AI and pysop shit from your social media feeds, the split between the anti science right and everybody else, etc.
If you liked Gibsons shift from far to near future then this is a similar shift. He has also become more succinct, his books are shorter, which I think in the main is a good thing as he was overly verbose at times.
That all sounds great to be honest - I love his predictions and seeing how close they come to reality. And more succinct writing is perfect. Whilst I loved Cryptonomicon, that book was probably a bit longer than it needed to be.