- The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)
- Dune (Frank Herbert)
- The Shadow of the Torturer (Gene Wolfe)
- Old Man's War series (John Scalzi)
- Bobiverse Series (Dennis E. Taylor)
Read them (if you haven't already) before any HBO serialization or movie can forever ruin them for you.
Peter Watts: Blindsight, Echopraxia Strong concept and incredibly fleshed-out world building, reminds me of Lem.
Stanislav Lem: Fiasco An inverted first-contact scenario.
Check out: Darwin's Radio, The Forge of God, Queen of Angels, Eon, The Man Who Would Be Kzin, Blood Music, City at the End of Time
I'd recommend starting with Gridlinked (vol. 1 of the Agent Cormac series)
He writes in a simple style mainly understandable by a language learner. The stories are pretty good too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel#Winn...
Limited by what my local library had on the shelves...this was before it started getting rid of all the books in the name of library science (but I digress).
In the end, with all the side detours I read a few hundred sci-fi books in a few years from that idea, came across books I wouldn't have otherwise, and got my fill of Sci-Fi after three decades away.
tldr; worked on my machine. Good luck.