I'm just about finishing Peter Watts' book "Blindsight", which is excellent but really, really really heavy stuff. Charlie Stross described that book aptly:

"Imagine a neurobiology-obsessed version of Greg Egan writing a first contact with aliens story from the point of view of a zombie posthuman crewman aboard a starship captained by a vampire, with not dying as the boobie prize."

I'd change that to read "...version of Greg Egan, but with McNihil's B&W mods, writing...", otherwise I fully concur.

It's a bit like Linda Nagata's excellent "Vast", but loads darker and with an Egan-like hard science disposition.

I'm also inclined to say nice things about Watts' Rifters books, which I just started - but likely more interesting to you out there is this factoid: Watts has published all his books under a Creative Commies licence online on his website (and in various convenient formats). Kudos to him, and I'll certainly consider buying his books when I see them in dead tree format.