I think Orson Scott Card peaked with Ender's Game and I'm really hoping the movie adaptation he's co-writing won't suck. Otherwise, except for the obvious classics, pretty much the only author I've read recently is Alastair Reynolds. It's heavy on the science, but I find it really interesting. I sort of liked Aftermath by Charles Sheffield, but his style of writing is kind of boring and simplistic, which is a problem a lot of SciFi authors share (Ben Bova, Gregory Benford, Jack McDevitt, etc.). I miss authors like Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Larry Niven, etc.

- Edit - To go back to OSC for a minute - I thought the Homecoming Series was ok, but I felt like it never went anywhere in the end. Oh, and my secret shame is that I enjoyed the book Battlefield Earth, although it was extremely cheesy.

IMO, the first 4 Ender books are fantastic (2nd almost as good as first). The Bean books were pretty good, and the rest were shit. The last one was just terrible. I've read pretty much everything he has written, and I'd recommend Enchanment as well as Pastwatch if you haven't read them already. Even his Women of Genesis series are interesting reads.

I read Pastwatch and thought it was blah. I hate fantasy so I won't be reading the Enchantment series, but I did forget that he wrote The Worthing Saga, which isn't bad.