Best Sci-fi books?

[roy-nexus-6]

link to the supposed top 100 sci fi books 

http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_books_rank1.html

[Big Troubled Bear]

+1 on the Foundation series of books from Asimov

[factorPlayer]

link to the supposed top 100 sci fi books 

http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_books_rank1.html

that's a cool site... I like how it has pics of the old-school book covers too. 

[roy-nexus-6]

that's a cool site... I like how it has pics of the old-school book covers too. 

I actually have a small collection of vintage sci fi books

[sno_duc]

Frank Herbert's "Dune"
Brain Herbert did a great job following up on his fathers work.

[faolan01]

Everything from Gibson is really good (Neuromance, Idoru, Burning Chrome, Mona Lisa Overdrive, etc), but they are best if you read them in the order they were written in. They aren't a series per se, but there are some characters and references that return in later writings and reading them in order really helps to flesh out the character development.

[Drunken Monkey]

That list of 100 top SF isn't bad, but it has a decidedly "hard SF" bias (i.e. the list likes the geeky stuff)

Now if you're looking for real literature... Gene Wolfe. Especially his "Book of the New Sun" series.

Rather tan gush on about how much I like the guy, I'll quote his peers

Award-winning science fiction author Michael Swanwick has said: "Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Wolfe

[oppet]

M.John Harrison  -Light
Its not new, but 2003 and quite good, i think

[DCXCV]

+1 on Gene Wolfe, Dan Simmons and Alastair Reynolds.

While I can appreciate the old stuff, i'd say the new stuff is plenty good, also.

Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

ooh, good one - also, Sirens of Titan.

[trenner]

The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers.

Sci-fi/fantasy.  Time travel, magic, romantic poets, a sadistic surgically-altered clown, and a body-swapping werewolf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anubis_Gates

[scienceiscool]

Foundation trilogy, but also anything by Asimov.  I read a book of short stories about robots, can't remember what it was called, but one of them was Bicentennial Man (which became a truly craptastic Robin Williams movie).

Dune, but don't bother with anything beyond the first one.  Read another half dozen books to find out that no, Herbert didn't have anywhere he was going.

Snow Crash, and less popular but equally as good The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.

Recently enjoyed The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin.

Otherworld series by Tad Williams, who also wrote an awesome book called Tailchaser's Song about the secret lives of cats.

[Manny]

The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert - Pretty rare, and rarer still to find someone who has read it, but it's a great book. Copies can be found on Amazon occasionally.

Recently enjoyed The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin.

Just saw the movie made from that. Odd.

[krolik]

Peter F. Hamilton: The Reality Disfunction  1 & 2, The Neutronium Alchemist 1 & 2, The Naked God 1 & 2.

C.J. Cherryh, the Foreigner series.

David Drake is one of my favorite authors, the Hammer's Slammers series is a stand out in military sci-fi, and for a space opera take on Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels try Drake's Lt. Leary series.

[hbliam]

Battlefield Earth -L. Ron Hubbard. The best of the best.

[somegirl]

Lots of classics already mentioned.

A newer one I quite liked was Hellspark by Janet Kagan.