One of my favourite SF authors is a fellow Australian - Greg Egan. I think his books are becoming more well known over time, though when I first discovered him over a decade ago, I had a hard time finding his work in regular bookstores. I still do, to some extent, but finding them online and in the Brisbane city council library has been easy, thank goodness.
The first Egan I read was Axiomatic. I first read this book as a teenager, when I bought it with a gift voucher. I have re-read it many times since, as I love all of the stories in this collection. If you like science fiction that has a definite focus on the human element - who are we, what makes us our unique self, how could this be tampered with in the future… you’ll definitely enjoy this book.
His novels include Teranesia, Quarantine, Diaspora, Permutation City and Schild’s Ladder. I have read all of these, and really enjoyed them all. Egan is a very clever guy, and so some of these might fall into the category of “hard” SF; but I personally enjoy the genre.
Egan, like many SF authors, cross-pollinates his stories. Asimov did it with the Multivac, and his Rules of Robotics, and it’s a device that I love, as it helps to build a universe in my head. What I call cross-pollination is the process of taking some thing - a person, new technology, idea, culture (like THE Culture in Iain M. Banks stories) - and using it across multiple stories/novels.
The cross-pollination of Egan’s that sticks in my mind is the ‘dual’, or ‘jewel’ - a device that quietly sits inside your head copying all your brain activity, so that one day you can dispense with your old, worn out biological brain and replace it with the eternal jewel. Egan has used this technology successfully in a number of his stories to really examine what really makes us who we are - and what makes us human.
Australia - Axiomatic is my favourite Egan book - follow the link to check them all out.
International
You can visit Greg’s web site here.
