my favorite hard sci-fi writer ever. I liked how you described his style of writing - many people hate it, but personally I adore it :-).

I liked his earlier rifters trilogy a lot - he put all of these books online, so you don't even have to buy them. The first one is "Starfish".

Here is short story set in the world of "The Thing" (1982 Carpenter's horror/sci-fi): http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

it was a delight to read, although I had to read it twice to really understand and appreciate everything.