I am reading a great book at the moment called "Dragon Egg" by Robert L Forward. an "ultra" hard scifi writter. He is kind of like Hal Clement as in uses lots and lots of real science in his stories.
Robert L Forward @ Wikipedia wrote:He worked on such projects as space tethers and space fountains, solar sails (including Starwisp), antimatter propulsion, and other spacecraft propulsion technologies, and did further research on more esoteric possibilities such as time travel and negative matter. In addition to over 200 papers and articles, he published 11 novels. He described his first novel, Dragon's Egg, as "A textbook on neutron star physics disguised as a novel."
Dragons Egg is really great so far. I am only about 1/2 way though it though. It is about a nutronstar that has compressed and been flung out into deep space and is about to pass close to earth. There are intelegent creatures living on it. They are kinda like large amebia. As the gavaty on the star is massive they are large, flat and liquid like. This book is so good. It is the first decent scifi, or what i call "exploritive" scifi I have read in ages. The plot is so so, but the plot isn't the point. The point is just to use your imagination as you enter this completly alien world. Really great stuff.
A Robert L Forward's science fiction books