Recommendations for "Hard" Sci-Fi manga?

[Jet_Jaguar]

I was wondering if there have been any "Hard" sci-fi manga (meaning science fiction that's a little more "serious" and scientifically rigorous than most popular sci-fi) released in English that I haven't heard of. I think the only one I've ever read is 2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino. I came across one of the old issues of it released by Viz years ago, and I liked it quite a bit. I know that Hoshino also did a manga adaptation of the American SF novel The Two Faces of Tomorrow that was released by Dark Horse around ten years ago, but I've never read it.

Are there any other sci-fi manga that have been released in English that are similar? Some stuff by Osamu Tezuka, like some of the volumes of Phoenix, comes close, but they have a little too much fantasy to really count as "hard" sci-fi.

I have a feeling that there probably is quite a bit of "hard" sci-fi manga in Japan, but I would bet that most of it is part of the big ocean of manga that no U.S. distributor will ever touch. I would also bet that the big U.S. manga distributors assume, either rightly or wrongly, that there's not much of a market for "hard" sci-fi manga and/or that there isn't much overlap between manga readers and readers of "hard" sci-fi in the U.S.

[sschroeder]

I was wondering if there have been any "Hard" sci-fi manga (meaning science fiction that's a little more "serious" and scientifically rigorous than most popular sci-fi) released in English that I haven't heard of.

Are there any other sci-fi manga that have been released in English that are similar? Some stuff by Osamu Tezuka, like some of the volumes of Phoenix, comes close, but they have a little too much fantasy to really count as "hard" sci-fi.

I haven't read anything you referenced, so my recommendation might not match what you want.

Are you familiar with Planetes by Makoto Yukimura? This was published by TokyoPop a few years ago and appears to be out of print now. I own only the first two volumes (out of 5, as vol 4 had 2 parts). I remember I thought the first vol. was excellent, so I'll suggest you try it, if you can find it:

http://www.tokyopop.com/product/1120/Planetes/1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/series/89744/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Planetes_chapters
anime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes

I haven't seen the anime, and I probably should have collected the other volumes of the manga while I had the chance.