Re: Sci-Fi criticism...help me PLEASE!!!!
Vernor Vinge's last two books are incredibly good, and I recommend them to everyone. I was so impressed that I tried to contract Vernor to work on my current software project, but he is too busy focusing on writing. Ah, well.
On a more debatable, but near-term sci-fi level, I quite enjoyed Victor Koman's "Kings of the High Frontier". I was prepared for the worst, because one of the premises is that a group of college kids were building a roton, but it turned out to be a lot of fun to read, and had a couple genuinely moving moments in it.
John Carmack