"Blindsight" by Peter Watts is just amazingly good, as are his other works. He does have a bleak view of humanity though. Also check out his friend and fellow

"Blindsight" by Peter Watts is just amazingly good, as are his other works. He does have a bleak view of humanity though. Also check out his friend and fellow Canadian Karl Schroeder's "Candesce" series of books set in an enormous globe of air floating in space. Feels like fantasy, but isn't. Vernor Vinge has already been mentioned. "A Fire Upon The Deep" is one of my favourite novels. He was a professor of Computer Science and he also popularised the concept of the coming Technological Singularity.