Currently

SF is at its best when the setting and the aliens and whatnot are window dressing over a study of our own mundane humanity. No book has ever done this better, for me, than Blindsight. On paper it’s a first-contact story, but the aliens are almost incidental to the big idea (and that big reveal).

I won’t say more than that, because going in cold is most of the fun. What I will say is that I came out the other side looking at other people a little differently (probably not for the better). It’s cold, dense, and so clever it’s almost rude about it.

Everything here is vast and slow and faintly dreadful: sub-light ships crawling between the stars, ruins on a dead world, and one deeply stubborn archaeologist prodding at a silence that really ought to be left well alone.

It’s the first of a trilogy, but it stands perfectly well on its own two feet. And, unusually for a trilogy, the sequels get better and better.

Oh, and the Nostalgia for Infinity is the best spaceship in all of science fiction, bar none. Sorry, Serenity. I don’t make the rules.