My first kindle was one of the best presents my wife ever gave me. This is coming from the guy who’s 5th grade idea of a dream home and making it in life was a library in the house. I still have an actual library full of books, but I have hundreds more digitally. For travel can’t beat taking hundred pounds of books in my jacket pocket with the kindle. There are tons of out of print books freely available for download, spanning everything from 19th century naval gunnery to steam train design (I might have some niche interests…). As @Harry_Bumcrack brought up, getting paper copies would be prohibitively expensive. Have I bought paper copies of books I have digitally, absolutely! Certain books just beg for a place on my physical shelves.
Somewhat on point, I was familiar with only about a 1/3 of these, having honed most of my SciFi chops on Audible. Not a list of authors, but of works, perhaps worthy of reading or listening and therefore answering the question of do we have modern sci-fi masters who we haven’t yet discovered.
I haven’t read Tiger! Tiger!, Norstrilla or Blindsight. I will definitely add those to my list.
And I had totally forgotten about Vernor Vinge - A Deepness in the Sky (sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep) and Across Realtime are really good.
I would also recommend Eon, Forge of God and it’s sequel Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear.
I have read The Dying Earth, but I would categorise that as fantasy rather than Sci-Fi
I second the Vernor Vinge books.
Tiger! Tiger! is great. Written in the 50’s it makes reference to a direction finder (think ADF/NDB), and that is the only thing that ages it. It truly does hold it’s own.
OK that is now a must read for me.
Because that is the hallmark of good science fiction IMHO, the tech might change but the message and themes are as true today as they ever were. I recently re-read Way Station by Clifford Simak, still relevant for these times.