Alastair Reynolds'
Revelation Space series is definitely worth a look too. He has a background working for the European Space Agency and his books feature high technology that nonetheless has a ring of greater plausibility about it (no 'magic' warp drives). The human societies in his book are often as strange as the alien races from other authors' universes and Reynolds' own universe is often a very dark place indeed.
Also, the paper versions have lovely shiny covers with cool pictures of spaceships on them
