I'll second David Weber and Issac Asimov is a must.

Dune by Frank Herbert
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Any and All books by Arthur C. Clarke
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Uplift Series by David Brin
Any and All books by Robert A. Heinlein
The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny

So, anybody read the "Sirens of Titan"??? Really was the best fiction I have ever read!!!

Much as the reocmmendations listed so far are good, solid classics, they're good solid classics of pretty old SF. And some of it, I personally find quite overrated (Asimov's love of implausibly expositional dialogue makes him entirely unreadable to me, for instance).

If you're looking for actual modern grand vista SF like Iain M Banks, I can recommend Alistair Reynolds and - of course - Ken MacLeod. Also, I've heard good things about Neal Asher.

Also, it behooves a student of modern SF to read William Gibson (primarily his three breakthrough novels Neuromancer, Count Zero & Mona Lisa Overdrive) and Neal Stephenson, both of whom tend to deal with informational societies and the ubiquity of popular culture. Stephenson's latest Magnum Opus The Baroque Cycle isn't SF at all and a very heavy read, but Snow Crash is really the definitive Cyberpunk novel and The Diamond Age has some wonderful ideas on nanotech and information technology.

Also, if you haven't read the books IMB has written as just Iain Banks, I can wholeheartedly recommend 90% of them, even though they're not SF (except for Walking on Glass and The Bridge, which both have SF/Fantasy elements).

Thanks for picking up on that Teaflax, as it is more recent offerings I'm looking for - and yes, all the other recommendations are great reads, though I haven't read Weber, or Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan.

I'll have another go at Neal Stephenson (I've only tried his Baroque Cycle and found it interesting but too much like work at the time) and try some Alastair Reynolds and Neal Asher (I've read most of Ken MacLeod's books and enjoyed them). Yes, Iain Banks non-SF novels make good reads too, must try his latest.

And will happily take any more good sci-fi recommendations.

I couldn't get through The Baroque Cycle either. The wife loved it, but halfway through the first book, I was exhausted. Snow Crash is a much easier read, as is The Diamond Age. Cryptonomicon has some of the same denseness of The Baroque Cycle, but is definitely worth the effort (even if it's not SF), and it's only about a third as long - which is long enough anyway.

My favorite SF author of all time is probably Gene Wolfe. His Book of the New Sun series is one I reread every five years or so. His writing is very opaque, though - half the time I feel like I'm watching a movie on a scrambled cable channel, and not until I reread the bok do I really get most of the background detail.

I can also recommend John Courtenay Grimwood's Arabesk tilogy (Pashazade, Effendi and Felaheen) as good post-Cyberpunk alternate-world novels. His style is a litle labored, but his ideas are solid.

The thing I hate about most recent sci-fi is that they read like a bad Made for TV movie.

When did writers forget to write. I blame D&D novels for this new trend. No depth of character and over reacted situations that are solved too easily.

I haven't read any of his work yet, but I've heard good things about Adam Roberts. His first novel, Salt, did really well in England and is now available in the US. I know he's had a bunch of others published since then, but not all are currently published on this side of the pond.

Arabin

Yes Smokeyrone, The Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut is a must. I saw Vonnegut lecture in Boulder over 25 years ago, the man was brilliant.

Everything else is fluff, but some very fun fluff is the Michael Moorcock series, Dancers at the End of Time (this is not another Elric series).

Well, the Foundation trilogy by Asimov is very interesting.

Anything by Larry Niven, especially his Known Space novels (Protector is a must for understanding Ringworld).

So many great SciFi/Fantasy books out there. The Chronicles of Amber are terrific, but I would put those in the Fantasy group. They are no less great for that, just no space opera involved at all.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clark.

Elle

P.S. And just in case people skip the subject line, The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester is outstanding.

P.P.S. Titan and the sequels by John Varley. Hard to classify, just unique.

I just get the distinct impression here that the question was "I just listened to some Aphex Twin, anything else like that?" and people have responded over and over with variations on "Have you tried The Rolling Stones, The Doors and Led Zeppelin?"

Teaflax, I had the same thought, but I was surprised when I went to look up Iain M. Banks on Amazon, and here is a snippet from a review on "Look to Windward", which is now on my must read list. Thanks for the reference to Banks, Zenguy! It looks like he pulls together some of the best stuff from my favorite authors.

"It's not that Banks brings anything new to science fiction in his Culture novels; even the Culture itself can be found by looking at some mixture of Cordwainer Smith and Isaac Asimov. His ideas are culled from the classics as well, as in this book the orbital is roughly Larry Niven's "ringworld" mixed with John Varley's world-mind Gaea from his Titan trilogy. But what Banks can do better than those four, and a host of other published SF writers, is create believable characters whose motivations mesh with the unlikely locations and situations he sets for them. There's a reason why this type of SF is called space opera, but in Banks' hands it refers not to the televised soap operas but the sturm und drang of classical music. Yes, there are exaggerations here, but when a Banks' character has amnesia, it becomes a thematic device, not just a crutch to get you from one chapter to the next."

I can't help putting in another plug for Alfred Bester. Read it and you will be chanting,

"Gully Foyle is my name
and Terra is my nation.
Deep space is my resting place,
the stars my destination."

Or something like that. I can't find my leather-bound copy!

Elle