A.C. Clarke has written a lot of great books. His Rama books (especially the first one), although 'slow' (like that's a negative point somehow... sigh) take a while to get into but are really interesting to read.

I've read numerous sci-fi novels. But the ones that really stand out for me are the ones that make up the original Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov.
I also like his Robots series, especially those that tied in with the Foundation story. Sorry, can't remember the titles.

And Rama by Arthur C Clarke.

The first Rama novel was the only one written by Arthur Clarke, the other two were co-written (i.e 95% written) by Gentry Lee and only had Arthur Clarke's name attached to them to make them sell more.
They're not very good and don't really follow the story or theme of the first novel very well.
For those that haven't read much Clarke, have a go at 'The City and the Stars'. It's an old one but a good one. Also good is 'A Fall of Moondust'.

Ah, I was about to post "City and the Stars" before I read your post. Much better than the Rama and Odyssey books I thought at the time (decades ago). It's been a long time since I read any substantial amount of SF, but I remember fondly the works of A.E. van Vogt and Clifford Simak. Anything of theirs. I enjoyed Heinlein and Asimov, but I was 13 at the time, and they mostly didn't hold up to rereading when I encountered a few of them again years later. Not so the van Vogt, which had kept its punch.

And I have reread Stars My Destination about six or seven times. Oh, my, what a work of art that book is. Someone on the jacket blurb of one of the editions called it a "firecracker of a novel"; yes, but I would go further, it's more like a whole pack of firecrackers, an ever-mounting series of crescendos, of explosions of mind expanding ideas. Despite that it was written almost 60 years ago and the world has overtaken much of what was breathtakingly radical in both style and content at the time, and science has closed many doors which seemed legitimately open territory for hard sf; still, it holds up in the sheer poetry of the Bester style, the quirky, elliptical way he unwraps an idea, and contrives to have it detonate in your head. One after another after another.

If you are impressed with it now, imagine the impact it had in 1955. It was as revolutionary as if Hendrix had played Purple Haze in the '30s. ...well, OK, in the late '40s, say.

I just recently finished reading the Foundation Trilogy for the second time in my life. What a great body of work by Asimov! It still blows my mind that he wrote these in the early 50's since it just seems so far ahead of its time.

"The Stars My Destination"!!! Well done indeed - good call. His other great one, a future detective/murder mystery "The Demolished Man" iirc is also excellent.

For Clarke, don't neglect "Childhood's End."

Van Vogt was dynamite. Checkout "Slan" if you have not already, as well as his other classics.

I would like to pimp Bob Shaw's delightfully funny and hard to find "Who Goes Here?" (The Warren Peace series)

So many ludicrous and yet interesting ideas.

I see many A.C. Clarke fans here;)

It is hard to indicate any particular No. 1, but if I had to it would be Randevous with Rama. It is so real.

Apart from that I like the whole Odyssey series, though 2061 and 3001 are not that uber.

I'm currently reading Endymion and it blows my mind;)

also

Foundation Trilogy
Dune
Songs of Distant Earth
Mars Trilogy
and

so many more;)

Thx to this tread I added some books to my list of next to buy.

Cheers
M

Welcome to SimHQ Macca. I see you just made your first post.

Thank you;)

Been visiting SimHQ for many yers, registered 2 years ago and finally made it to write a post;)

I wrote a post about a hardcore military sci-fi series by David Gunn in the book section;

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2977111/Death_s_Head_David_Gunn.html#Post2977111

I've not seen this author mentioned before and I think he is well worth checking out.

I can't believe in a thread this long about Sci-Fi novels, not one post mentions anything about Poul Anderson. While he is not the household name that his contemporaries became (Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov), his work was extensive and of comparable quality. Come to think of it, I don't recall seeing Ray Bradbury in any of the previous posts either.

Tau Zero, one of my faves.