Slavvy posted:

Can anyone recommend me hard-ish sf with at least halfway decent characterisation? I've found that when I read cheesy space opera with a panoply of interesting characters, the 'science' makes me cringe. Yet the vast majority of hard sf, and even just plain ol' regular sf, has characters who are barely distinguishable from eachother, let alone interesting unto themselves. LE Modesitt JR is the worst example of this I can think of; I am incapable of reading another of his books because I don't want to read two paragraphs about what sort of sweater vest the guy is wearing and what type of meal he ordered.

What's some decent sf where the characters are remotely interesting? Yes I want aliens and strange worlds and space ships and all that poo poo, but why do the people involved have to be two-dimensional silhouettes with a name and gender printed on the front? That isn't to say I haven't read any sf which isn't like this, it's just that the majority seems to be this way and I find it hard to pick something up, regardless of how wonderful the premise is, if the characterisation is non-existent. 90% of the time when I pick up a book that has 'hugo/nebula/whatever winning' written on the front I know there will be at least ten characters you can't tell apart.

When I think about it, the same often applies to fantasy. Often someone will have some sort of curse/destiny/hidden role/secret past and their personality doesn't seem to be at all affected or shaped by it. The wheel of time had about a dozen characters who were only differentiated by their circumstance and the colour of their clothes.

Additionally, what are some cool books about colonisation? I've only read a few novels on the subject, most of which I can't remember right now besides Niven's Destiny's Road.