Currently

See, this is the one I can’t shut up about. On paper it’s hard SF, a first-contact story—but the aliens are almost a McGuffin. What Watts is really doing is taking a scalpel to the idea that there’s anyone home behind your eyes at all.

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 the people around me a little differently, and—full disclosure—not entirely for the better. It’s cold, dense, and so clever it’s almost rude about it (there’s an appendix of real citations, in case you assumed he was bluffing).

Read it. Then come and argue with me about it, because I have Opinions.

Gothic space opera written by a bloke who used to be an actual ESA astronomer, and it shows—nobody’s zipping about faster than light just to keep the plot moving. 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—start here and see if the dread gets its hooks into you like it did me.

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