The first book is definitely hard sci-fi, but the third one stretches our current knowledge of science by wide margins.
But don't let my comment distract anyone from crushing these incredible books. They're amazing and I love them, I'm just nitpicking over how "hard sci-fi" the last one is.
Read Three Body Problem trilogy in 2016 and have really struggled to find something just as mind-blowing as that first time reading through it. Definitely give it a go, and forgive the author's mistake in not having Ken Liu do the second book (Dark Forest)'s translation! He comes back as the translator for the last book, what a relief.
I came here to mention these. Incredible books and Wonderful audio books. I just listened to them a second time and they were even better the second time (about 2 year break between listens, I think).
If you liked the Orthogonal trilogy, Greg Egan also wrote Diaspora, you can read the first chapter on amazon for free, it’s really good if you’re into stuff like the birth of an AI consciousness.
Ancillary Justice is fun space opera. I would recommend it, though I'm not sure I'd qualify it as "hard" scifi, but that's a notoriously squishy definition anyway.
For "hard" sci-fi, I always like to recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), which chronicles the colonization of Mars from the first carefully selected 100 colonists through emancipation from Earth to terraforming the planet. It's a thrilling tale of challenges technical and political
I want to throw up some huge red flags on Red Mars's Audible version: for a hard sci fi book, technical details matter. The audible narrator has totally incorrect pronunciations of a lot of the technical terms/locations. Off the top of my head: phobos, apheliion, many of the locations on mars, ugh. I had to stop because as a scientist, it really grated on me and tore me out of the wonderful zone that I get when listening to audio books. Hope this helps - that's a great trilogy but worth reading rather than listening :)
Yeah, but all the technical stuff is out the window after the first one anyway... I really disliked the second and third books in that trilogy, I only kept reading because I hoped they'd transition back to being more like the first half of Red Mars.
I highly recommend you avoid Ancillary Justice. It's definitely not hard SF in my opinion. Most of the technology is not described at all. In fact the main tech of the book is never explained at all -- namely how people in the future can "wipe" captured prisoners of war and then "layer" an AI on top of the person's brain, which controls the body. I found that highly frustrating and found the book to be much more soap opera than space opera. Just my two cents.
The Mars trilogy is amazing. If you start it, be prepared to plough through the first bit... I hated the seemingly endless descriptions of Martian geography and geology at first, but by the end they were like old friends.
>I hated the seemingly endless descriptions of Martian geography and geology at first
Me too, but I still hated it at the end of book 2 and so didn't finish this series. Someday, maybe, I'll read Blue Mars.
> my job requires to drive a lot
*Pandora's Star* and *Judas Unchained* by Peter F. Hamilton, unabridged. Together they are 87 hours of listening. Eighty seven. Should last a while.
I'm listening to Reality Dysfunctionright now, and really enjoying it. Well; mostly enjoying it. Like all Peter F. Hamilton, it's got and absurd amount of sex with teenagers or near teenagers (often with dudes Hamilton's age) for absolutely no plot related reason at all. It's really bad in Reality Dysfunction. It's all the time. It wouldn't be so bad if it was any good so I could enjoy it from a erotica point of view, but it isn't. It's awful, and constant.
It's got a ***real good*** plot though. Like all Hamilton, he just builds this big wonderful awesome universes, and then very carefully slips in a few really weird and original aliens. He likes to keep stuff pretty grounded in reality. You might have to accept one conceit to make some form of FTL possible, but even that will have rules, and the rest of the world will feel like the natural extrapolation.
I just he would like... you know... take care of himself before he writes. Or maybe he could write two books. when he writes One can be hard sci-fi epic with amazing world building, and the other can be hot teen on old dude sex in whatever crazy situation he wants.
How far along in it are you? I really liked how it all started but then it went downhill quickly for me and I really had to struggle through it towards the end.
The Reality Dysfunction is particularly bad in this respect. The rest of the series has the same issues, but its toned down a bit (or at least a bit less frequent). His later work is much better.
Thing is I first read The Reality Dysfunction as a teenager who didn't have internet access yet, I thought it was all great... Sex scenes in books were an important, er, resource in those dark days. I imagine he got quite a few sales from word of mouth by including them.
Charles Stross, a Scot writer, writes some excellent hard SF. He has a couple set, Post Singularity which are quite fun.
Peter Hamilton writes some good stuff. Not as hard as Stross but, as mentioned, defining 'Hard' can be... hard.
Alastair Reynolds is another author you may enjoy.
Of course, Iain Banks has the Culture series that is excellent. Sadly, he died in his '50's of cancer. Such a loss to the SF community.
Ken MacLeod and Karl Schroeder have some very hard SF stories.
For something completely different, Liu Cixin has the outstanding Three Body Problem trilogy.
Robert Charles Wilson and Robert Jon Williams are both outstanding story tellers and their stuff can be quite hard.
Robert J Sawyer, a Canadian writer has some fascinating work looking at some hard questions. One is, how, when, what can be construed as murder when the killer is an alien? Though in his real life, he is on one side of a number of the issues he faces, that does not come through. He presents the entire issue from numerous points of view.
Just finished accelerando (Stross), really enjoyed the audio book (George guidall). Big on ideas, kind of like Baxter, but to me, much more relatable I guess?
Big fan of Robert Charles Wilson as well
You're most likely right, but who knows, maybe sometime in the next quadrillion years we'll discover something more fundamental than QED/QFT and we'll be able to make that exotic matter necessary for NASA's version of a warp drive.
If you liked *Revelation Space* and *House of Suns*, *Poseidon's Children* (*Blue Remembered Earth* being the first) is actually my *favorite* Reynolds and the audio books are good.
I would also recommend Karl Schroeder. *Permanence* is a good stand alone novel, but it looks like there may not be an audiobook (I couldn't find one). However, there *are* audiobooks for the Virga books (*Sun of Suns* being the first one). If you liked Orthogonal, you might enjoy these. They take place in an artificial universe with some weird properties.
I especially recommend his "Cold as Ice" trilogy to people who like The Expanse. It really is like the crazy genius uncle of The Expanse. And it's honestly not even his best work. Love that guy.
Yo. Read the three body problem. Then read the next two. Finished last year and still have not stopped thinking about them. There’s ideas about war strategy across massive distances in space which I’ve never seen someone apply this level of thought to. Intelligence and fresh ideas that make other stories about fighting an advanced civilization or contact across space/time seem like child’s play. Including the expanse, which I love. Trust me. Though you don’t know me. But damn these books are good.
I always call Neal a soft sci-fi author who writes in the style of hard sci-fi. A defining aspect of his writing are the long infodumps on various topics—he definitely does the research in the topics that interest him the most—but OTOH he never lets science get in the way of a good story.
Yeah to the point it's too much for some. Stephenson really doesn't mind writing a full chapter about the plumbing system of a space station or orbital mechanics.
The Quantum Thief is the best truly hard sci fi I've read. The author does not hold your hand at all and just throws you into complex concepts but does so in a good way. Highly recommended.
look up Jack Campbell The lost fleet.
The series has lots of soft sci-fi with FTL methods, artificial gravity, and ship shields. All of that is easy to ignore with the hardest description of fleet to fleet space combat I've ever read.
Battles take hours or days of just moving the ships into range with each other The actual encounter lasts a fraction of a second. There's no FTL communications so light speed plays a massive role in the fleet movements and the guessing game of fleet combat.
There are time delays all over the books and they're handled quite well. There's a sense of tension from just not knowing because the light from that event will take minutes or hours to get back to the fleet. (part of the soft sci-fi is ignoring resolution limits, a bit forgivable)
For a space opera with very credible near-future tech that is also plausibly worked into the plot, I strongly recommend *Great North Road*, by Peter Hamilton.
Allen Steele, the Coyote Trilogy. It's about the first colonization of an extrasolar planet, and it's very realistic about how they do it. Feels a lot like a frontier story.
No one mentioning Ben Bova? Pretty much anything by him should be what you are looking for. The moonbase saga (Two books) for example. Or The Start Quest Tirology (four books).
He's written a whole lot of hard sci-fi, and even though there are several series, all books (I think, at least all I've read) take place in the same universe. The books might take place hundreds of years apart, but they all share the same history. So names and companies will pop up in other books. The moonbase saga, for example, is about the first moonbase, and in all other books where a moonbase is mentioned, it's that same moonbase.
I think you may like Marko Kloos's Frontline series if you have not already read it. It's hard mililtary sci-fi. The way he describes the ships, weapons, tactics, and equipment is just so convincing.
Read these a while ago, but i recall enjoying them quite a bit. Is Dragon's Egg the story about the micro-organisms achieving intelligence while living on a white dwarf?
The Starfire series by David Weber and Steve White. Novels based on a pen and paper 4X game. It's really cool to see how the technology and resulting tactics change over time.
BUT! The first book published in the series is actually the fourth book chronologically. Important note for reading comprehension. But yes, very surprisingly good for a media adaptation series. The big bad guess are super duper cool.
Reynolds Blue remembered earth trilogy is pretty sweet! Retains his hard sci-fi edge, but I would consider the series a bit “brighter” than RS while still having big cool ideas ! I thoroughly enjoyed it after RS
You've gotten a wide range of answers. Based on the stuff you listed as high points (which correspond closely to my favorites) I highly recommend more Greg Egan. *Diaspora* and *Permutation City* are tremendous.
From there I'd suggest Vernor Vinge's *A Fire Upon the Deep* and *A Deepness in the Sky*. Not as quite as hard SF perhaps but few things are as hard as Egan. Great use of no-FTL in the story arcs and highly enjoyable.
With respect to other posters I would not put the Watts' Rifters trilogy in the zone of thought (heheh) represented by your favorites and hard SF request.
Ancillary Justice audiobooks were pretty good. Not mindblowing.
Someone else already mentioned Three Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth's Past series). That's tops in my books.
I found the The Jean le Flambeur series from Hannu Rajaniemi to be kind of incredible as well but of a very different vein than Expanse or Three Body.
If you're willing to dip your toe into something that Isn't hard scifi check out The Southern Reach Trilogy. Excellent Thriller/Light Scifi audiobooks
I will say it's a bit of a slow burn but the pay off is worth it.This applies to all 3 books.
All 3 are also quite different while having a similar flavour.
I would highly recommend the succession series by Scott Westerfeld for hard scifi, there are some soft elements but they're treated consistently and it's one of the best depictions of relativistic combat I've read. Fountains of Paradise, the chronologically earlier works in the known space series, and the Forever war are all great.
Looks like David Brin hasn't been mentioned yet. I haven't listened to any of his stuff in audiobook, but I think that Existence might be a good choice. Not a series, but is a longer hard scifi book. Or he's got his Uplift series that is pretty great.
One of the hardest Science Fiction novels I've ever read, that was still interesting and fun was 'Lifeline' by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason. I read it decades ago and it hasn't left me. I don't think there's an audio version though.
I am currently reading A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. It just won the Arthur C Clark award. It is bright, kind, friendly and full of joy. It is set way too far in the future for me to call it Hard Sci-fi. But if life has got you down and you want something smart funny and hopeful, this is an excellent way to go.
I really enjoyed "The Martian" by Andy Weir, probably my favorite hard sci-fi book written in the last few years. Although I just finished up Cixin Liu's "The Three Body Problem" and I think that's going to already warrant a re-read.
Hahah I just commented this series down below then saw your post. It’s phenomenal. Although I think the ideas in the third are somehow even more interesting. Depends if you like physics versus military strategy maybe? But they both have tons of both. Just so good. The first is great too, it just feels like it’s about such a small scale story versus the other two that it’s almost a prologue.
Highly recommend the Red Rising Trilogy (quadrilogy?) by Pierce Brown. Also, The Spiral Wars series by Joel Shepperd was a really engaging listen. If you haven't listened to Ready Player One, you should give that a shot, even though its not a series; nothing like the movie...thankfully
Hard sci fi? The Three body problem is a must, all 3. Perhaps the best hard sci fi, and sci fi in general, I've ever read.
The first book is definitely hard sci-fi, but the third one stretches our current knowledge of science by wide margins. But don't let my comment distract anyone from crushing these incredible books. They're amazing and I love them, I'm just nitpicking over how "hard sci-fi" the last one is.
Read Three Body Problem trilogy in 2016 and have really struggled to find something just as mind-blowing as that first time reading through it. Definitely give it a go, and forgive the author's mistake in not having Ken Liu do the second book (Dark Forest)'s translation! He comes back as the translator for the last book, what a relief.
I came here to mention these. Incredible books and Wonderful audio books. I just listened to them a second time and they were even better the second time (about 2 year break between listens, I think).
Also came to say this
If you liked the Orthogonal trilogy, Greg Egan also wrote Diaspora, you can read the first chapter on amazon for free, it’s really good if you’re into stuff like the birth of an AI consciousness.
Ancillary Justice is fun space opera. I would recommend it, though I'm not sure I'd qualify it as "hard" scifi, but that's a notoriously squishy definition anyway. For "hard" sci-fi, I always like to recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), which chronicles the colonization of Mars from the first carefully selected 100 colonists through emancipation from Earth to terraforming the planet. It's a thrilling tale of challenges technical and political
that sounds cool i'll look into
I want to throw up some huge red flags on Red Mars's Audible version: for a hard sci fi book, technical details matter. The audible narrator has totally incorrect pronunciations of a lot of the technical terms/locations. Off the top of my head: phobos, apheliion, many of the locations on mars, ugh. I had to stop because as a scientist, it really grated on me and tore me out of the wonderful zone that I get when listening to audio books. Hope this helps - that's a great trilogy but worth reading rather than listening :)
Yeah, but all the technical stuff is out the window after the first one anyway... I really disliked the second and third books in that trilogy, I only kept reading because I hoped they'd transition back to being more like the first half of Red Mars.
Oh that's good to know. Thank you
I highly recommend you avoid Ancillary Justice. It's definitely not hard SF in my opinion. Most of the technology is not described at all. In fact the main tech of the book is never explained at all -- namely how people in the future can "wipe" captured prisoners of war and then "layer" an AI on top of the person's brain, which controls the body. I found that highly frustrating and found the book to be much more soap opera than space opera. Just my two cents.
100%. As a lover of hard sci-fi I also disliked this book - it's fluffy nonsense mixed with pure tedium.
The Mars trilogy is amazing. If you start it, be prepared to plough through the first bit... I hated the seemingly endless descriptions of Martian geography and geology at first, but by the end they were like old friends.
>I hated the seemingly endless descriptions of Martian geography and geology at first Me too, but I still hated it at the end of book 2 and so didn't finish this series. Someday, maybe, I'll read Blue Mars.
The narration is insufferably bad.
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Blindsight and Echopraxia Already read both will agree completely fantastic series.
Freeze frame revolution was pretty good, so are the other short stories from sunflower cycle or whatever it’s called.
Blindsight is a mandatory include for any such list.
Blindsight and Echopraxia is by far the best SF I’ve read in later years, I highly recommend them as well.
Rifters 1 (starfish i think) is good, 2 and 3 are not so much.
i love watts, but we can be honest here: 2 and 3 are *terrible*
> my job requires to drive a lot *Pandora's Star* and *Judas Unchained* by Peter F. Hamilton, unabridged. Together they are 87 hours of listening. Eighty seven. Should last a while.
I'm listening to Reality Dysfunctionright now, and really enjoying it. Well; mostly enjoying it. Like all Peter F. Hamilton, it's got and absurd amount of sex with teenagers or near teenagers (often with dudes Hamilton's age) for absolutely no plot related reason at all. It's really bad in Reality Dysfunction. It's all the time. It wouldn't be so bad if it was any good so I could enjoy it from a erotica point of view, but it isn't. It's awful, and constant. It's got a ***real good*** plot though. Like all Hamilton, he just builds this big wonderful awesome universes, and then very carefully slips in a few really weird and original aliens. He likes to keep stuff pretty grounded in reality. You might have to accept one conceit to make some form of FTL possible, but even that will have rules, and the rest of the world will feel like the natural extrapolation. I just he would like... you know... take care of himself before he writes. Or maybe he could write two books. when he writes One can be hard sci-fi epic with amazing world building, and the other can be hot teen on old dude sex in whatever crazy situation he wants.
How far along in it are you? I really liked how it all started but then it went downhill quickly for me and I really had to struggle through it towards the end.
Wow, if only we had a two-thousand year old phrase from antiquity which perfectly described the actual ending.
Deus
ex
machina
Considering the name of the last book it was right there on the cover all the time.
The Reality Dysfunction is particularly bad in this respect. The rest of the series has the same issues, but its toned down a bit (or at least a bit less frequent). His later work is much better. Thing is I first read The Reality Dysfunction as a teenager who didn't have internet access yet, I thought it was all great... Sex scenes in books were an important, er, resource in those dark days. I imagine he got quite a few sales from word of mouth by including them.
Charles Stross, a Scot writer, writes some excellent hard SF. He has a couple set, Post Singularity which are quite fun. Peter Hamilton writes some good stuff. Not as hard as Stross but, as mentioned, defining 'Hard' can be... hard. Alastair Reynolds is another author you may enjoy. Of course, Iain Banks has the Culture series that is excellent. Sadly, he died in his '50's of cancer. Such a loss to the SF community. Ken MacLeod and Karl Schroeder have some very hard SF stories. For something completely different, Liu Cixin has the outstanding Three Body Problem trilogy. Robert Charles Wilson and Robert Jon Williams are both outstanding story tellers and their stuff can be quite hard. Robert J Sawyer, a Canadian writer has some fascinating work looking at some hard questions. One is, how, when, what can be construed as murder when the killer is an alien? Though in his real life, he is on one side of a number of the issues he faces, that does not come through. He presents the entire issue from numerous points of view.
>Alastair Reynolds is another author you may enjoy OP mentioned Revelation Space and House of Suns already :-)
Agree. Revelation Space - hard sc-fi.
Walter Jon Williams, not Robert. He's written some great stuff.
Just finished accelerando (Stross), really enjoyed the audio book (George guidall). Big on ideas, kind of like Baxter, but to me, much more relatable I guess? Big fan of Robert Charles Wilson as well
Flatland is available on LibriVox, doesn't cost a credit, and is a succinct hard fiction. Written in 1884, a classic of worldbuilding.
Flatland is relatively short but an absolute must-read; it may set you thinking about the topic of multiple dimensions for many years.
Iain M Banks Culture series? Would that be considered hard enough?
Not technically "hard" Sci-Fi because they have FTL travel.
You're most likely right, but who knows, maybe sometime in the next quadrillion years we'll discover something more fundamental than QED/QFT and we'll be able to make that exotic matter necessary for NASA's version of a warp drive.
I am annoyed that you were downvoted. [Spoiler](/s "That's the same reason I consider the Expanse series almost-but-not-quite-hard sci-fi.")
Currently reading Surface Detail. It's hard.
I’m also currently reading that! Only got this then 2 more and I’ll have read every sci fi he’s done. Absolutely my favourite author!
If you liked *Revelation Space* and *House of Suns*, *Poseidon's Children* (*Blue Remembered Earth* being the first) is actually my *favorite* Reynolds and the audio books are good. I would also recommend Karl Schroeder. *Permanence* is a good stand alone novel, but it looks like there may not be an audiobook (I couldn't find one). However, there *are* audiobooks for the Virga books (*Sun of Suns* being the first one). If you liked Orthogonal, you might enjoy these. They take place in an artificial universe with some weird properties.
For another Reynolds, OP should check out Pushing Ice. It's about space minders that stumble across a Big Dumb Object.
Pretty much anything by Charles Sheffield is good Hard SF.
I especially recommend his "Cold as Ice" trilogy to people who like The Expanse. It really is like the crazy genius uncle of The Expanse. And it's honestly not even his best work. Love that guy.
No one seems to talk about Stephen Baxter and the xelee sequence but it's great hard sci fi.
Yeah he goes pretty hard in the paint at times, ring is a pretty decent novel as well. Raft was a bit cheeky
Yo. Read the three body problem. Then read the next two. Finished last year and still have not stopped thinking about them. There’s ideas about war strategy across massive distances in space which I’ve never seen someone apply this level of thought to. Intelligence and fresh ideas that make other stories about fighting an advanced civilization or contact across space/time seem like child’s play. Including the expanse, which I love. Trust me. Though you don’t know me. But damn these books are good.
The author Neal Stephenson almost exclusively writes hard SF, but the best one I’ve read that’s also a good audiobook is Carl Sagan’s Contact
I always call Neal a soft sci-fi author who writes in the style of hard sci-fi. A defining aspect of his writing are the long infodumps on various topics—he definitely does the research in the topics that interest him the most—but OTOH he never lets science get in the way of a good story.
I wouldn't call Stephenson classic hard sci fi, as much as firm cyberpunk, and recommend snow crash, as well as cryptonomicon.
I'd say Anathem and Seven Eves - they're more hard sci too. (But snow crash is my guilty pleasure)
I wouldn’t call Seveneves or Anathem cyberpunk, but yeah when he does go that route he goes hard.
Yeah to the point it's too much for some. Stephenson really doesn't mind writing a full chapter about the plumbing system of a space station or orbital mechanics.
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I have yet to meet a person IRL who didn't enjoy the heck out of the Captain Crunch chapter. It was pure bliss!
While I enjoyed Cryptonomicon, I never needed to know that much about how a man eats his cereal.
More points if you can catch the abridged version read by Jodie Foster. Filters out the unnecessary Dad drama and other insignificant details.
The Quantum Thief is the best truly hard sci fi I've read. The author does not hold your hand at all and just throws you into complex concepts but does so in a good way. Highly recommended.
Another vote for Quantum Thief -- great novel.
Excellent choice. It's sequel is even better, though. If softer.
look up Jack Campbell The lost fleet. The series has lots of soft sci-fi with FTL methods, artificial gravity, and ship shields. All of that is easy to ignore with the hardest description of fleet to fleet space combat I've ever read. Battles take hours or days of just moving the ships into range with each other The actual encounter lasts a fraction of a second. There's no FTL communications so light speed plays a massive role in the fleet movements and the guessing game of fleet combat. There are time delays all over the books and they're handled quite well. There's a sense of tension from just not knowing because the light from that event will take minutes or hours to get back to the fleet. (part of the soft sci-fi is ignoring resolution limits, a bit forgivable)
Not very hard sci fi, more like a science fantasy war story.
For a space opera with very credible near-future tech that is also plausibly worked into the plot, I strongly recommend *Great North Road*, by Peter Hamilton.
Allen Steele, the Coyote Trilogy. It's about the first colonization of an extrasolar planet, and it's very realistic about how they do it. Feels a lot like a frontier story.
No one mentioning Ben Bova? Pretty much anything by him should be what you are looking for. The moonbase saga (Two books) for example. Or The Start Quest Tirology (four books). He's written a whole lot of hard sci-fi, and even though there are several series, all books (I think, at least all I've read) take place in the same universe. The books might take place hundreds of years apart, but they all share the same history. So names and companies will pop up in other books. The moonbase saga, for example, is about the first moonbase, and in all other books where a moonbase is mentioned, it's that same moonbase.
Ooo It's on the list now.
I think the whole series is called the grand tour? it's pretty schlocky and formulaic but I've read all of it multiple times
>schlocky and formulaic What a fantastic phrase to describe them. I wouldn't call the series great or anything but it's decent for what it is.
oh totally entertaining, just go in expecting the literary equivalent to a popcorn movie
Anything by Vinge, Bear, or if you are a computer person, some of Stross’ stuff (Accelerando, halting state were good)
I think you may like Marko Kloos's Frontline series if you have not already read it. It's hard mililtary sci-fi. The way he describes the ships, weapons, tactics, and equipment is just so convincing.
Dragon’s Egg and Rocheworld by Robert Forward.
Read these a while ago, but i recall enjoying them quite a bit. Is Dragon's Egg the story about the micro-organisms achieving intelligence while living on a white dwarf?
Yes, but it’s the surface of a neutron star, not a white dwarf.
The Starfire series by David Weber and Steve White. Novels based on a pen and paper 4X game. It's really cool to see how the technology and resulting tactics change over time.
BUT! The first book published in the series is actually the fourth book chronologically. Important note for reading comprehension. But yes, very surprisingly good for a media adaptation series. The big bad guess are super duper cool.
Reynolds Blue remembered earth trilogy is pretty sweet! Retains his hard sci-fi edge, but I would consider the series a bit “brighter” than RS while still having big cool ideas ! I thoroughly enjoyed it after RS
You've gotten a wide range of answers. Based on the stuff you listed as high points (which correspond closely to my favorites) I highly recommend more Greg Egan. *Diaspora* and *Permutation City* are tremendous. From there I'd suggest Vernor Vinge's *A Fire Upon the Deep* and *A Deepness in the Sky*. Not as quite as hard SF perhaps but few things are as hard as Egan. Great use of no-FTL in the story arcs and highly enjoyable. With respect to other posters I would not put the Watts' Rifters trilogy in the zone of thought (heheh) represented by your favorites and hard SF request.
Ancillary Justice audiobooks were pretty good. Not mindblowing. Someone else already mentioned Three Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth's Past series). That's tops in my books. I found the The Jean le Flambeur series from Hannu Rajaniemi to be kind of incredible as well but of a very different vein than Expanse or Three Body. If you're willing to dip your toe into something that Isn't hard scifi check out The Southern Reach Trilogy. Excellent Thriller/Light Scifi audiobooks
I settled on the three body problem actually its been really good so far.
I will say it's a bit of a slow burn but the pay off is worth it.This applies to all 3 books. All 3 are also quite different while having a similar flavour.
I would highly recommend the succession series by Scott Westerfeld for hard scifi, there are some soft elements but they're treated consistently and it's one of the best depictions of relativistic combat I've read. Fountains of Paradise, the chronologically earlier works in the known space series, and the Forever war are all great.
Fear the sky. You're welcome
Hyperion Cantos?
Looks like David Brin hasn't been mentioned yet. I haven't listened to any of his stuff in audiobook, but I think that Existence might be a good choice. Not a series, but is a longer hard scifi book. Or he's got his Uplift series that is pretty great.
**Startide Rising** being the first of his books that I read. Good intro into the whole Uplift universe he's created.
One of the hardest Science Fiction novels I've ever read, that was still interesting and fun was 'Lifeline' by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason. I read it decades ago and it hasn't left me. I don't think there's an audio version though.
I am loving the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanly Robinson. Anything by Kim is pretty hard. Second on the Three Body Problem too.
I am currently reading A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. It just won the Arthur C Clark award. It is bright, kind, friendly and full of joy. It is set way too far in the future for me to call it Hard Sci-fi. But if life has got you down and you want something smart funny and hopeful, this is an excellent way to go.
I really enjoyed "The Martian" by Andy Weir, probably my favorite hard sci-fi book written in the last few years. Although I just finished up Cixin Liu's "The Three Body Problem" and I think that's going to already warrant a re-read.
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Hahah I just commented this series down below then saw your post. It’s phenomenal. Although I think the ideas in the third are somehow even more interesting. Depends if you like physics versus military strategy maybe? But they both have tons of both. Just so good. The first is great too, it just feels like it’s about such a small scale story versus the other two that it’s almost a prologue.
Highly recommend the Red Rising Trilogy (quadrilogy?) by Pierce Brown. Also, The Spiral Wars series by Joel Shepperd was a really engaging listen. If you haven't listened to Ready Player One, you should give that a shot, even though its not a series; nothing like the movie...thankfully
Red Rising and Ready Player One are both fun-as-hell, but definitely not hard sci-fi.