I like everything you mentioned here, but have never read The Forever War - will now!

Iain Banks - Use of weapons
Alastair Reynolds - The Prefect
Larry Niven - Protector
Peter Hamiton - Night's Dawn trilogy
Peter Hamilton - His latest trilogy, though wasn't as keen on the second book still waiting for the 3rd.

Cool thread so far, stuff to add to my 'must buy' list.

Neuromancer - William Gibson

And others already mentioned, like Dune and Foundation series.

Iain Banks is one of my favourite authors of any genre. His books are automatic must reads for me; his more traditional fiction just as much as his SF.

I've heard that before, I still need to check it out. You'd like the Dan Simmons Ilium & Olympos books and s well as Altered Carbon if you like that.

Some great suggestions here!

All of William Gibson's work is genius Sci-fi. The Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) is great as well as his newer work. He said this about sci-fi:
…I felt that I was trying to describe an unthinkable present and I actually feel that science fiction's best use today is the exploration of contemporary reality rather than any attempt to predict where we are going…The best thing you can do with science today is use it to explore the present. Earth is the alien planet now.

—William Gibson in an interview on CNN, August 26, 1997.
Check out Pattern Recognition and Spook Country for his new style. I for one am eager for more!


I also recommend Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle for a very different but awesome take on science-fiction.

Oh yeah - Neuromancer...Charles Stross/Accelerando...but also Alastair Reynolds/the Revelation Space set. And absolutely, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

I also love Stephenson's work, my favourite being Cryptonomicon.

The Baroque Cycle is great, but MAN, is that ever a lot of reading

I just got Anathem for my birthday, but haven't started it yet, I need to finish the 3rd book in the Baroque Cycle first...

Also, ya, I love all of Gibson's work, and his novels are also an immediate 'must buy' for me.

I will definitely check out the Dan Simmons work.

Cheers!

I just finished "Songs of Distant Earth", been on a bit of a Clarke binge of late. Clark/Niven are usually where I go for hard sci-fi.

The "Evergence" trilogy is excellent, very golden age feel to it.

Thanks so much for all of the suggestions you guys have put in this thread. This has now provided me with a reading list that should keep me busy for a very long time.