Terry may not have written "major works" of hard SF but he had long been a fan before he hit the Big Time. I don't know if you ever came across his earlier SF works in which his sense of humour is expressed in a playful fashion among the tropes of hard SF; for example "The Dark Side of the Sun" has biological starships, emancipated robots, a biomechanical ecology, heirs to vast empires, escape and pursuit, a search for the Progenitors, aliens who are alien to both humans and other aliens, black holes as antipersonnel weapons, immortality drugs etc. etc. in a single 200-page odyssey. It still may not be to your taste, of course.