I've almost broken my vow not to be excited by anything that's coming out soon with Neal Stephenson's
Quicksilver. Have you read
Zodiac: The Eco Thriller by him? (It might be my favorite of his books although it was written earlier).
I haven't read
What do you care about what other people think?, although I have read
Surely you're joking! and loved it.
One of my favorite science fiction authors now is
Peter Watts, who has published
Starfish and
Maelstrom, both of which are great, extremely potent, gritty and dark. There are a lot of cool ideas expressed in these books, and in the back pages he lists references and context for many of them.
Oh, and I'm a fan of Larry Niven to, so I recommend you to read any of his books that you haven't read already. =]
Edit: That shouldn't be underlined!
Edit (2): Oh. Links are underlined.
Edit (3): There are also some excerpts at rifters.com, which is where the Starfish link goes to