What are your favorite sci-fi books?

Multiple re-reads:

- Saga of the Exiles by Julian May, which merges science fiction with folklore/fantasy in Pliocene Earth

- Hyperion by Dan Simmons, excellent SF with a feel of the Canterbury Tales about it

- Neuromancer by William Gibson, plus the follow-ups (all the Sprawl) are very good too

- The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, about the eco collapse of the US in the 1980s (10 years after it was written) and which William Gibson called a "brilliant novel"

And a couple of guilty pleasures:

- Venus Equilateral by George O Smith, 1940s stories based around a three mile long space station at the L4 point in space, a bit like Babylon 5 meets DS9 in the era of vacuum tubes

- Necrotech by KC Alexander, a brutal and obscene body-mod cyberpunk dystopia (the sequel of which, Nanoshock, has a superbly offensive opening sentence)

- Halcyon Drift by Brian Stableford, about a corporate dystopia and a pilot who hooks up his body to merge with his ship (a bit blase now but less so then, especially as I had read far less at the time)

- Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony, a 6 book series following the rise of a refugee to becoming the Tyrant of Jupiter

Two favorite books of mine I've seldom seen mentioned but I think are gems: The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Time out of joint, both by Philip K. Dick. The first plays with several layers of reality along the book. One time I found myself re-reading some passages because there were so many layers it was hard to follow, but it's worth it. The second is (if I recall correctly) the inspiration for a 90s pop movie starring Jim Carrey. I won't mention the name because it might give away some plot points.

Ted Chiang's sci-fi short story collections like Stories Of Your Life and Others is fantastic. It features the story that the feature length film Arrival from a few years ago was based on, among other great stories.

Foundation series (Asimov)

Stainless Steel Rat series (Harrison - a bit juvenile, but fun)

Dune (Herbert)

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Heinlein)

Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)

Starship Troopers (Heinlein)

A Scanner Darkly (Dick)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Dick)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)

Childhood's End (Clarke)

Robot series (Asimov)

Bicentennial Man (Asimov)

Brave New World (Huxley)

The Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge, and A Deepness in the Sky in particular.

If you check the series out, and I highly recommend you do, read it in order. Which would mean starting with A Fire Upon the Deep, which is excellent.

Any short story by J.G. Ballard.

His work is sci-fiction in the sense it explores inner-space and not outer-space, and was prophetic in many ways of current technology [1].

One story I frequently reflect on with the rise of LLMs is "Studio 5, The Stars" [2] from the Vermilion Sands collection [3]. Where automated poetry machines are used and people no longer have skill to write poetry, and trying to do so it met with skepticism and disgust.

1. "Why we are living in JG Ballard’s world" https://archive.is/pksxh

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_5,_The_Stars

3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermilion_Sands

My absolute favorite is Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, The Jagged Orbit was also excellent. Other than that, of course Snow Crash is a masterpiece, but I think my favorite Stephenson book is The Diamond Age. Another excellent one is Daemon by Daniel Suarez whose books are quite fascinating and look at generally pretty topical plotlines (I was just thinking I have to revisit his book Kill Decision about AI enabled killer drones).

Blindsight by Peter Watts. Canticle for Leibowitz by Henry Miller. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein.

Blindsight is possibly my favorite book of all time. It stayed with me for a very long time and sincerely changed the way I view the world.

Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds

Wireless - Charles Stross

Stories of your life and others - Ted Chiang

Moonrise - Ben Bova

Last Plane to Heaven - Jay Lake

Best of Greg Egan - Greg Egan

"Mockingbird", by Walter Tevis. 40 years old but startlingly timely: centuries after humanity ceded all authority and responsibility to AI, the last superintelligent robot is ready to die of boredom – and one human has learned to read.

"Elder Race", by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This short novel is a bit reminiscent of Iain Bank's "Inversions" in that it combines sci-fi and fantasy through the perspectives of an anthropologist from an advanced space-faring culture and a second protagonist from the medieval world they are secretly observing.

Personally I don't care so much about genre categories, but it's interesting reading all these comments to think about "science fiction" vs. "speculative fiction" and then the lump category of science fantasy.

Anyway, one title I didn't see mentioned was Grass by Sheri Tepper, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_(novel).

* Greg Egan’s short story collections, Diaspora, and Permutation City. Fair warning, Egan puts the “hard” in “hard sci-fi”.

* Haven’t finished the Expanse final trilogy, but I really enjoyed the first two.

* The Wool series

* Project Hail Mary, for story reasons I’d recommend the audio book.

* We Are Bob trilogy, fourth book is garbage.

* Old Man’s War

* The Culture Series by Ian Banks

* If you enjoyed Seveneves, and thus can tolerate Stephenson’s consistent habit to drop the ball in the last 20% of his books, Diamond Age is enjoyable.

I read Snow Crash growing up. It is a wonderful weird cyberpunk novel that (metaverse aside, unfortunately) turned out to be kind of Nostradamusly. Easy read. Higly recommended!

Easily these (so far):

This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (actually now one of my all-time favorites, without regard to genre. Just amazing)

Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Book of Strange New Things - Michael Faber

Ted Chiang's short story collections (Exhalations and Stories of your life and others)

Daemon - Daniel Suarez

The City and the City - China Miéville

Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (this one still haunts my dreams at times)

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) - Dennis Taylor (just finished this series for book club)

Galatea 2.2, The Overstory, Bewilderment, The Gold Bug Variations - 4 different books, all by Richard Powers - what can I say, the man is a genius and a treasure

Eifelheim - Michael Flynn - ok, this book can be a slog at times, but it is very rewarding for those who persevere, and has stuck in my brain for many years

Chocky - John Wyndham - A quiet, delightful surprise

Providence - Max Barry - This book flows like a movie. It will make a great movie. I found myself LITERALLY out of breath a couple of times

Hench: A Novel - Natalie Zina Walschots - Quirky, memorable

The Peacemaker's Code - Deepak Malhotra - Why hasn't this guy written more sci-fi?

Orange World and Other Stories - Karen Russell - OK, maybe not strictly sci-fi, but this book tickles my brain

GUILTY PLEASURE SCI-FI FAVORITE: The Vaz series by Laurence Dahners. I think I've read that series 3 times now.

Worm by Wildbow is a pretty good tale. It was written as a web serial and follows a young girl in a world where "capes" (people with supernatural powers) are normal to a point they are regulated and entwined with education, government and crime.

It can be a little hard to get into initially, first few chapters are necessary set up, but once the ball starts rolling its a real page turner. There are a lot of entangled plot lines that almost all add major substance to the larger plot. I'm actually re-reading it again just because I remember it so fondly. With all the superhero/game-lore shows and movies out now, it would be a fan dream to see the Worm-verse come to life as a live-action or anime series. The serial nature of it would adapt naturally I'd imagine.

Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds

Three Body Problem Series - Cixin Liu

Salvation Sequence - Peter F Hamilton

(and by listing these I just realized I like stories about humanities doom)

I've recently been enjoying "The Murderbot Diaries" by Martha Wells.

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. It feels more relevant now than ever and there is now a direct Polish->English translation.

There are many different genres of sci fi. Seveneves is pretty much hard science fiction, in that it deals with plausible physics, which is also one of my favourite genres.

I particularly recommend the Xeelee Sequence (a series of novels) by Stephen Baxter if you like mind bending sci fi over cosmological time).

More classically, The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is a great (and shorter) read.

First contact novels can also be interesting (meeting aliens for the first time). Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke is great. Also, Blindsight by Peter Watts.

So many others!

Here’s a book I don’t expect to see on too many lists (and I’m surprised it’s on mine, as I don’t typically like big-property universes like Star Trek): The Final Reflection, John M Ford. It’s an ancient book (by Star Trek standards-1984) set in the original ST:TOS universe, but it did Klingon world-building before that was a thing (it’s not canon, as it did this long before Klingons were fleshed out in any real way). Loved the worldbuilding, loved that it made a then 2-dimensional alien into a rich 3-d society.

Fair warning, I only liked the first part of Seveneves; I thought the second part was stupid. You'll get a lot of recommendations for Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" which I personally hate (though the first part of the first book is very well written), but if you like all of Seveneves then it might suit you.

My personal favourites that might not already be on everyone else's lists:

Fiasco - Stanisław Lem

This is how you lose the time war - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Feersum Endjinn - Iain Banks

The Dark Side of the Sun - Terry Pratchett (yes, that one)

Blindsight - Peter Watts

Bloom - Wil McCarthy

Good luck!

The Expanse books are great. The TV show is a pretty good adaptation too, but I love the portrayal of the characters in the books.

A recent thing I started reading (first book release this month) is The Last Horizon series by Will Wight (author of Cradle, and Elder Empire books). This one's more of a sci-fi and fantasy blend, if you're into that sort of thing. In a nutshell, it's magic-as-technology, but with space travel.

So many listed here are already in my top list, what I haven’t seen is the Luna Trilogy by Ian McDonald. Neat ideas from corporate run future moon colony.

I getting thought anything by Kim S. Robinson. I read the Mars trilogy 20 years ago and plan to re-read it once I'm done. Recently went thought "Ministry for the future" from him. Weird mix of factual non fiction and SF. Read like a fan fiction of a iPCC Report.

Outside of hard SF, Ursula K Leguin. Great world building.

Many of Philip K. Dick books and short stories, but Ubik and A Maze of Death are my favorites.

William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive)

Douglas N. Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Frank Herbert's Dune books

Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human

Robert A. Heinlein - Citizen of the Galaxy

Robert Charles Wilson's Spin trilogy

Frederik Pohl's Heechee books

- A Fire Upon The Deep

- Brave New World

- The Dispossessed

- The Sirens of Titan / Slaughterhouse 5

- Recursion

- Exhalation

- There Is No Antimemetics Division

- Foundation Series

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (Avatar definitely was inspired by this one)

A few favourites off the top of my head:

The Difference Engine - William Gibson & Bruce Sterling Diaspora - Greg Egan Flashback - Dan Simmons Timescape - Gregory Benford Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke (but the "co"-authored sequels are too terrible for words)

I've read Sphere by Michael Crichton several times and always enjoy it. I particularly like the way things are seen by some characters and then another character brings an alternate perspective that changes the reader's perception.

A recent favourite is "There is no anti-memetics division". You can read it over here, for free. Or buy a physical copy (which I did, and was very happy to)

https://qntm.org/scp

Outside of some of the ones listed here, here are a couple of others:

* Alan Dean Foster -- Call to Arms, in this case the we are the strong ones.

* Hal Clement -- Nitrogen Fix, replace Nitrogen with CO2 in your head and this could be rather current :)

* An obscure one I liked, but I forgot the Author and Title --

Seems Interstellar Travel could be achieved with 15th Century Tech.

So Aliens landed on late 20th Century Earth with the goal of taking it over. But were easily defeated due to how advanced Earth Tech was compared to what they had. We analyzed their spacecraft and learned how easy it was to achieve interstellar travel. Was a rather interesting read IIRC.

Quite a few of my faves already mentioned in this thread so let me throw in a couple of relatively lesser-known ones:

   - City by Clifford Simak
   - Everything by M.A.Foster, but Waves and the Transformer Trilogy in particular
   - You Must Remember Us...? by Leonard Daventry
   - The Green Man and Other Stories by Rand B. Lee (in particular the story Knight of Shallows)
   - The Star Wolf series by David Gerrold

And a few easily overlooked ones by Philip K. Dick:

   - Clans of the Alphane Moon
   - The Game-Players of Titan
   - Now Wait for Last Year.

By far it is Pandem[1] by Sergei and Marina Dyachenko.

Unfortunately, I don't think it was ever translated to English.

1. https://fantlab.ru/work1052

I really enjoy(ed) Neal Asher's "Transformation" series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Intelligence) and the Polity universe.

I enjoy sci-fi series, interesting spacecraft, compelling aliens and am a sucker for machine-based intelligence.

This series combines all these and re-engaged in sci-fi. I went on to read most of Asher's other books including "Agent Cormac" and "Spatterjay" series.

I've read a lot of scifi but I'd recommend only one to make sure you get the point:

The "remembrance of earth's past" trilogy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Pas...) which is more known as "the three body problem". All the books are great but my favourite by a large margin is "the dark forest" (part 2)

Has anyone mentioned the Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe? If not, I will, and if so, I second it.

Other favorites are Ted Chiang's stories, Children of Time, Dune, and if you want some real escapist but thoroughly fun pulpy hilarity: Dungeon Crawler Carl

The Unincorporated Man

(Ender's Game too, but haven't read the sequels, but I also recommend Ender's Shadow - a parallel novel from a different character's perspective.)

It's not exactly sci-fi but there are sci-fi elements and it's one of my favorite books so I'll just mention it anyway: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

I normally love heavy, chewy, thought-provoking sci-fi books, but lately i've been fighting burnout and wanted something lighter.

I stumbled into the Pip and Flinx series by Alan Dean Foster. Easy and enjoyable sci-fi, great world-building, and interesting adventures broken up into about 15 books. And free for kindle via my public library.

Can recommend if you want to skip the gaudy 7 layer chocolate cake and just want a tasty madeleine instead. :)

Philip K Dick, Adjustment Team, https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Adjustment_Team

my comment: Wonderful scifi, highly recommended, short and sweet. The story which the Matt Damon movie Adjustment Bureau was based upon. This story is shorter than the movie plot tho. Theres a wonderful audiobook tape recording of this book as well.

Lots of good recs about, throwing in a couple more mentions. Just finished Red Rising, which I could not put down. Kept feeling like it was on a good arch, then exceeding expectations. Looking forward to more.

Not enough Heinlein on the lost here. I'm not sure what specifically I'd recommend though.

Quantum Thief is probably some of the most imaginative & epic Sci fi I've read, engrossing world.

I was just reading William Gibson's short-story collection, "Burning Chrome." The first story is "Johnny Mnemonic", and the last one (a story also titled "Burning Chrome") is supposed to be the very first use of the word cyberspace.

And there's also three stories he co-wrote with other authors -- Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, and Michael Swanick.

I’ve seen Greg Egan mentioned a couple times. I love most of what I’ve read by him, but “The Clockwork Rocket” trilogy stands far above for me. A multi-generational hard sci-fi story. Characters who are intelligent, curious researchers who set out to learn and unravel the nature of their universe to try to save their world, set in alternate physics.

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. The world building in this one book is amazing, wish he'd made a series out of it.

As an author better known for other genres, C.S. Lewis wrote an exceptional as Sci-Fi trilogy beginning in the 1930s. He would finish it in by the 1950s. Heavy in philosophy and combatting the currently popular ideas of eugenics and Wells’ ideation of human conquering of the solar system and eventual universe, it was a great read.

Many great books are already enumerated here.

If I am not wrong, nobody mentioned Roadside picnic yet.

Also liked Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by S. Lem.

I am currently reading The Long Mars by Terry Pratchett and Steve Baxter (it’s part of the Long Earth series)

For fun -

Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde Hitchhikers guide is a given The Chronicles of St Mary by Jodi Taylor (and Time Police)

If you can make your way over to more fantasy, then:

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher Alex Verus series by Benedict Jacks

Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell. It's not a grand epic space opera - its more like a grand "learn what life on a space freighter is like" opera. The books are strangely relaxing and calming.

Love throwing on an "ambient spaceship sounds" youtube and re-reading these.

Some recent favorites:

- Children of Time (Tchaikovsky)

- A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Chambers)

- Project Hail Mary (Weir)

- The Culture Series (Banks)

- The Expanse Series (Corey)

- The Red Rising Series (Brown)

Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, or the Solar Cycle (New Sun, Long Sun, Short Sun) as a whole.

The Lathe of Heaven Ursula K. Le Guin

Rendezvous with Rama. Arthur C Clarke

Consider Phlebas. Iain M Banks

Dune. Frank Herbert

Kiteworld. Keith Roberts

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams

The Nights Dawn trilogy[1] is my all time personal favorite.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night%27s_Dawn_Trilogy

City - Clifford D Simack

All of Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois Bujold

Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh

Stand in Zanzibar John Bruner

Adiamante - LE Modesitt Jr

Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen

Known Space series by Larry Niven and ALL of his collaborations with Jerry Pournelle

Midshipman’s Hope by David Feintuch

Gateway - Fredrick Pohl

Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg

Anything Neal Stephenson. I've read them all. Multiple times.

But some other stuff that people haven't yet mentioned that I enjoyed:

- Matt Haig: The Humans, How to Stop Time

- Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon trilogy

- Ramez Naam: Nexus Trilogy

- Hugh Howie: Silo series

- Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice

- Ernest Cline: Ready Player 1

Bobiverse series (Dennis E. Taylor)

Old Man's War series (John Scalzi)

The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)

A few lesser known but great sci-if books:

-Permutation City

-Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

-The Egg (Andy Weir short story)

The Wormwood Trilogy by Tade Thompson: https://www.librarything.com/work/18463533

Linda Nagata's works, particularly The Nanotech Succession series.

I'll plug some excellent work that is underrepresented here:

CJ Cherryh's "Cyteen". Won the Hugo for best novel in '89. The backdrop is Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe -- which is arguably one of those classic "cold war in space" type space opera settings of science fiction of a certain vintage -- but that conflict isn't the focus of this novel. Cyteen is set in the research organisation that designs, grows and conditions the "azi" clone slave caste that generates population of labourers and specialists required to keep the Union society running. I found it initially slow going, but it turned out to be one of the best novels I've read in a long time. The plot is a kind of coming-of-age / political-intrigue / murder mystery tale. Not a space opera - power games, paranoia, abuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyteen

Yoon Ha Lee's "Ninefox Gambit" (first of a trilogy, each book in the trilogy shortlisted for Hugo best novel 2017/2018/2019). Space opera / military sci-fi. The political stability of the empire depends upon adherence to the empire's standard 'calendar', which is maintained through ritual torture of heretics. Much exotic technology depends upon calendric properties, and fails in regions where populations are following a nonstandard heretical calendar. The outcomes of battles depend not only on how many fleets or waves of infantry can be expended, but each side's mathematical ability to understand the local calendrical properties and adapt their tactics and technology accordingly. The plot follows a military officer's mission to quash a rebellion at a key star fortress -- and her attempt to improve the chances of success by having the mind of a dead undefeated war-criminal general loaded into her head. Space opera / military sci-fi.

Arkady Martine's "A Memory Called Empire" (won Hugo best novel in 2020). A tiny independent station sends a replacement diplomat into the heart of a neighboring empire, in an attempt to direct the empire's attention elsewhere and maintain independent station sovereignty, and discover what happened to the previous diplomat. Backdrop is suitable for a space opera, the story is political intrigue. The station society is one where memories and personalities can be artificially recorded and stored, and then re-implanted into future generations to preserve skills and knowledge. The novel explores attraction and intoxication with the culture and language of a dominant foreign power that is threatening to engulf one's own home.

Kurt Vonnegut, Neil Stephenson, William Gibson. Though Vonnegut would fight the label, his first free novels could be considered sci Fi. I like them better than the later ones

1) Three-Body Problem series 2) Hyperion series (first two books especially) 3) Cryptonomicon 4) Cloud Atlas 5) Wandering Earth (collection of short stories)

Galactic North - Alastair Reynolds

House of Suns - Alastair Reynolds

Lilith’s Brood - Octavia Butler

The Expanse

Anything by Neal Stephenson. (Except Fall, maybe.) Cryptonomicron is my fav modern novel.

Project Hail Mary. The Martian. Artemis.

Expanse series.

William Gibson,s stuff. Loved Peripheral, and it's sequel Agency.

Dragon's Egg, by Robert L. Forward

Nexus Trilogy, by Ramez Naam

Anathem, By Neal Stephenson

Many already listed.

Would additionally recommend for fun Blake Crouch, esp Dark Matter. I also enjoyed the Wool trilogy by Hugh Howey (now an Apple TV series called Silo)

1632 - Eric Flint

Not quite science fiction, but it's an alternative history that teaches a lot about infrastructure and science along the way.

Can anyone recommend some good Soviet/Russian Sci-Fi? Obviously, it would have to be available in English translation.

my favorite so far is The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell.

but the best thing i have done to get good book recommendations is to join a scifi book club where we pick a new title every month.

here is what we read until now:

    Andy Weir: Project Hail Mary
    William Gibson: Neuromancer
    Theodore Sturgeon: More Than Human
    Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice
    Chen Qiufan and Kai-Fu Lee: AI 2041
    David Wellington: The Last Astronaut
    Nathan Lowell: Quarter Share
    Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built
    Octavia E Butler: Parable of the Talents
    John Scalzi: Kaiju Preservation Society
    David Brin: Kiln People
    Emma Straub: This Time Tomorrow
    Ursula K Le Guin: Left Hand of Darkness
    Dennis E Taylor: We are Legion
    Emily St John Mandel: Sea of Tranquility
    William Gibson: The Peripheral
    Dan Simmons: Hyperion
    Elisabet Moon: The Speed of Dark
    Alastair Reynolds: Eversion
    Adrian Tchaikovsky: Children Of Time
    Andromeda Romano-Lax: Plumb Rains

everyone of these was selected by popular vote from a handful of nominations, which means each is endorsed by half a dozen or a dozen people.

unfortunately i had to move and am no longer part of that club, and getting updates on their current selections is difficult.

anyone know of a similar club running online? (telegram, matrix or a forum maybe)

or is there interest in forming a club?

we could have a monthly HN post with recommendations, making selections by upvotes/downvotes, and a jitsi meetup to discuss the book afterwards.

Hyperion

Ringworld

Titan

Perhaps a standard list but: Hyperion, Deepness in the Sky, Snow crash, Permutation City, Exhalation and other Ted Chiang

When younger, Ender's Game was big for me.

I read a lot of the scifi/fantasy section in our local library.

Tom Swift was pretty good too.

I like Ivan Efremov’s works, if you can find those in English.

Wool by Hugh Howey (Silo is now steaming on AppleTV).

Screenplay for "A Topiary"

"Mimsy Were the Borogroves," by Lewis Padgett, is short and excellent.

- Project Hail Mary

- Children of Time

- Accelerando

- The Forever War

- Axiomatic

I recommend: William Gibson, China Miéville, Neal Asher, Iain M. Banks

Daniel Keys Moran

  + Emerald Eyes
  + The Long Run
  + The Last Dancer

I don’t reread books as a rule, but I’ve reread these, and TLR at least five times.

I can rattle of an endless list of authors I like, but by organic evidence of “favorites” these stand out.

For light comedies:

The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)

Hitchhiker's Guide series (Douglas Adams)

Many of the books already mentioned plus A Canticle for Leibowitz

His Masters Voice by Stanislav Lem

Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers

Cyteen by CH Cherryh

Solaris got me into sci-fi and it is still one of my favorite.

All of Asimov, Philip K Dick, Jules Verne.

Stranger in a strange land by Heinlein

Arthur C Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama

1984

Snow Crash

Gene Wolfe - "The Shadow of the Torturer" - 4 books series called The Book of the New Sun