GOOD Sci Fi

Alastair Reynold's Century Rain is GOOD Sci Fi. The guy can tell an epic tale, and at the end of it, I am rewarded with the following:
- A story that has non-stop forward motion
- Items that are seemingly casually dropped in and unexplained earlier, are explained and made relevant later.
- Economy of story telling: He rewards me by telling me relevant details that will actually come in handy later in the story.

The story was a tight 500 pages with dozens of characters, but none were superfluous - even those not central to the story were intentional red-herrings - no throw away anything. The man can WRITE. Also, he happily stays away from the bad scifi weakness of attempting to write love scenes. Writing badly written love scenes makes me feel embarassed for reading them, and embarassed for the writer, who I can only suspect has not had sufficient experience to be able to write a GOOD one. Alastair emerges with his integrity intact by side stepping the issue, and doing a tasteful "fade to black" where appropriate.

If you want to discover him, this is a good one - it stands alone. He has done more interconnected works (a multi volume series is what I started with) which I recommend as well.

I am only sharing this because I spent a good page on vitriol about BAD scifi, and wanted to share something GOOD.