Ian Watson?

I've only read one book of his, The Martian Inca which I no longer have and I keep meaning to find more. As a hard sf fan are there any others I should look out for? Not really interested in the whole Warhammer thing...

Chekhov's Journey is one of my favourite Watson's, but other good ones include The Embedding, Hard Questions, Mockymen, Under Heaven's Bridge, and any of his short story collections.

I've enjoyed short stories of his but have never read any of his novels. He seems a quite versatile writer.

I really liked his story The Coming of Vertumnus and have recently bought a short story collection of the same name so that I can re-read it.

I believe he was responsible for the genesis of the movie AI, although Aldiss wrote the short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long on which it was uultimately based.

Kubrick brought Watson in to work on the script. Ian has written about it - see here.

Kubrick also discussed the script for A.I. with Bob Shaw.

#7 Bob Shaw, really? Thats going back a bit!

Kubrick never rushed things. And Ian Watson was a (vaguely close-ish) neighbour.

Back when I was working on natural language understanding programs, The Embedding was of particular interest. Haven't reread it since it came out, though.

Another thumbs up for anything by Ian Watson. I slightly prefer his short fiction, which shows better his ability to come 'at things' in a different way...

See http://iansales.com/2011/06/28/watsonia/

Ian Watson also has a volume of poetry and a cookbook (well a co-written cookbook) in Spanish to his name.

13, good for him!