Bimbos of the Death Sun is brilliant and hilarious. The follow-up, Zombies of the Gene Pool is lower-key, but a great look at Golden Age science fiction fandom.
As for the authors from the list a page back, I'll second the recommendations for Robert J. Sawyer, Peter Watts, Greg Bear's Blood Music (better in original novella version, imho).
Sawyer, however, is really more of an ideas man than a character guy, although he tries his best, being Canadian and writing about the social consequences of the tech/developments. So his novels are generallly strong on exploring the idea and how it plays out in society at large, but a little fuzzy as far as emotional convincingness insofar as how individual personalities take it goes.
And I say this as someone who owns practically all his books.
Recommended reads: start with the
freebie short stories on his website. "The Hand You're Dealt" and "Identity Theft" are novellas that won both sf and mystery prizes, and are some of the best of his work. Also good, "Just Like Old Times", "Iterations", and "You See But Do Not Observe" is unmissable for Sherlock Holmes fans.
As far as his novels go, I especially liked the Quintaglio Ascension trilogy (intelligent dinosaurs), Golden Fleece (locked room murder mystery on a colony ship which can't spare any of its future colonists), The Terminal Experiment (AI simulation of human brain goes rogue), Illegal Alien (loosley based on exploring the celebrity notoriety/reasonable doubt aspects of the OJ Simpson case, as applied to extraterrestrials), Factoring Humanity (kind of Contact-ish, message arrives from beyond stars, only how to interpret it?), Calculating God (what if visiting aliens believed in Intelligent Design and came to Earth looking for proof?).
He's also won/nominated for Hugos for the Neanderthal Parallax and the current WWW trilogy, but while I liked those books well enough and still plan on reading/getting the upcoming ones, the lead characterizations just felt kind of… off to me. But then it's probably not easy for 50-something men to convincingly portray teenaged girls.
Peter Watts offers
all his stuff Creative Commons licensed on his website, alongside a tipjar.
At novel length, the easiest work to get into is "Blindsight", since the Rifters trilogy really is a trilogy, although you can read the first one standalone with no problems and no feeling that the story abruptly cliffhangers To Be Continued…
Best short stories, "Fractals", about the fractal nature of human hatred, "The Island", one of this year's Hugo novella nominees, and while "Bulk Food" is kind of hokey, if you've ever been annoyed at PETA or Greenpeace's sometimes overdramatic tactics, you'll like this one. A lot.
I should note that both Sawyer and Watts have actual scientific backgrounds. Sawyer trained to be a paleontologist before going into journalism school, and Watts is a marine biologist who for some bizarre reason, moved from the Canada's extremely marine biodiverse West coast to the concrete jungle of Toronto.