I have so many. In real life, this is where I get a very intense look in my eye, and about 50% of the time, I can see that the person I'm speaking with has realized that they're now trapped in an hour-long conversation with me.

I'll make it a short list of recent authors I've liked:

- Adrian Tchaikovsky. He's best known for his Children of Time series, but his other scifi books are also excellent; I haven't read the fantasy ones. "The Expert System's Brother" is particularly excellent.

- James Cambias. "A Darkling Sea" is a tremendously cool novel set at the bottom of an ocean under a moon's icy surface. Arkad's World has some very interesting world-building & aliens. And Corsair is a fun near-future technothriller about near-space and moon mining.

- Stephen Baxter (author of the Xeelee Sequence) writes very good books, but just about none of them have a happy ending, and they're mostly grim - but very interesting.

- It's not HN if I don't recommend Greg Egan, Peter Watts, and Neal Stephenson.