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Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space and Poseidon's Children books are a lot of fun. They're hard, but not inhumanly hard, speculative science fiction. There are the usual deep thoughts (What is sentience?) and big questions (relating to the Fermi Paradox and future human evolution) but also loads of grotesquerie (Chasm City) and absurd satire (Absolution Gap).
Unlike Asimov, Reynolds describes things in detail, often playfully using clinical vocabulary to describe machines and planets. There is also some positronic space opera ("See androids fighting..."), but, when science must give way to story, "[Reynolds] tries not to be stupid about it." (I think that's what he said in a BBC interview. )
Unlike with Clarke's bland administrators, Baxter's corporados, and Stapledon's wispy demigods, one cares what happens to Reynold's mostly human-ish characters.
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