I was at the bookstore yesterday looking for a couple self-help type books, when I wandered into the Sci-Fi section. I haven’t read anything in this genre since I was a kid and I’m not really sure what is good and what isn’t. At $15-20 a pop, I wasn’t really interested in taking the risk. Can anyone recommend any good authors or titles? The series I read as a kid was Animorphs (stop laughing :o;)). They were pretty cool I guess. I especially liked the one that was about the Ellimist’s beginnings. If they were a little more “sciency,” they would’ve been better. I’m not so interested in the whole animal morphing thing (although that was pretty cool), as much as I am in the whole aliens, space-travel, different worlds, etc. Any ideas?
I certainly don’t want to dissuade anyone from posting their recommendations to this thread, but I do want to point out to the OP that we have a SDMB Book Recommendation Thread Compendium with links to lots of previous threads of book recommendations, including a few specifically devoted to Science Fiction.
There are plenty of good books, but a lot of the ones I loved are, sadly, out of print as people who were familiar with the authors have gotten older and died. (Lots of people on this Board obviously love Jack Vance, for instance, but I haven’t seen a Jack Vance book at a non-used-bookstore in ages)
Here are some you can find:
I, Robot and the Foundation* original trilogy by Isaac Asimov
Childhood’s End, Rendezvous with Rama* and The Complete Short Stories by Arthur C. Clarke
Dune, Children of Dune, and Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
Damned near anything in print by Robert Heinlein (especially The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers)
Most of the things in print you can find by Larry Niven, with or without collaborators. I also recommens the entire series of The Man-Kzin Wars, which now has 12 volumes, plus spinoffs and expansions.
Anything by John Scalzi
I think a collection of Cprdwainer Smith’s works is still in general distribution. You can get his complete works from NESFA press, but it’d be a special order.
There’s plenty more, but that’s a good start. Sadly, I think you’d have a hard time finding Alfred Bester (The Demolished Man, The Stars my Destination), L. Spraue de Camp, Robert Sheckly, William Tenn, Henry Kuttner, Catherine L. Moore, Lester Del Rey, Fredric Brown, and a host of others on even a well-stocked bookstore’s shelves.
- stay away from the sequels and prequels. Especially the Rama books co-authored by Gentry Lee and the really thick Foundation Sequels and Prequels that Asimov wrote And the Dune sequels and prequels by Andreson and Brian Herbert aren’t as good as the first few books by Frank Herbert. Even though, sadly, all of these sequels are very common.
:smack: Somehow, I completely missed that. My bad. It was stickied and everything. It appears that I have unnecessarily embarrassed myself here, but I have some good suggestions so far so I guess it isn’t a total loss. 
Locus magazine maintains an extensive database of all major awards in the field, and is readable, sortable, and searchable by winners and nominees. They cover science fiction, fantasy,and horror as well as many specialized awards for young adults, poetry, gay & lesbian, libertarian, alternate history, etc.
Award winners are usually a somewhat different slice of the field, just as most mainstream bestsellers never show up in the award nominees. However, most of the winners are also big names with widespread popularity. Best of all they’re up-to-date so that you get names other than people whose heyday was 50 or more years ago.
Tor has done a number of rereleases and compilations of Vance’s work - including the Demon Princes and Planet of Adventure series. While you might not find them in a bookstore you can get them online…
You can get newly-published books by Hal Clement and Cordwainer Smith and Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore from NESFA Press, Hanta Press, and others, too, but you won’t see them in even a well-stocked bookstore. I’m surprised that Tor=-published books aren’t similarly available, but I stand by my statement that I haven’t seen Vance in any bookstore in ages – and i’ve looked. I tried to limit my list to things I have seen. And to things I’m familiar with, which is why it’s shy on recent writers.
Sounds like your neighborhood needs a better class of bookstores. I’ve bought all of these authors, including limited-edition runs of Vance reissues, at my local bookstore.
David Brin is good. Check out Earth, Glory Season, Kiln People, The Postman, The Practice Effect, or Sundiver.
Lois McMaster Bujold is very popular. Most of her books are part of a series, so you should start out with Falling Free, Cordelia’s Honor, or Young Miles.
John Varley’s recent Red Thunder trilogy is good: Red Thunder, Red Lightning, and Rolling Thunder (although I feel Rolling Thunder is not as good as the first two).
Sounds like you have an extraordinary bookstore – I live in the Boston area, and haven’t seen thgose books in any of the stores.
Two more recent suggestions (not to take anything away from the classics):
The Heliconia Trilogy by Brian Aldiss (beginning with Heliconia Spring)
*The Skinner * by Neal Asher (I understand there are sequels now set in the same world, but I haven’t read them).
Sounds like you’re looking for some good ol’ fashioned Space Opera, which, if that’s the case, I highly recommend Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained. The Niven works are good too.
A few other possibilities:
Edmond Hamilton (schlocky pulp SF, but I love it)
Leigh Brackett, especially the Mars stories (great sword-and-planet pulp SF)
Ted Sturgeon
David Drake (military SF)
Fredric Brown
Chad Oliver (anthropologists in spaaaace!)
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Glen Cook, specifically Passage at Arms (an SF treatment of submarine warfare)
Matthew Hughes (though he’s trying a little too hard to channel Jack Vance)
Keith Laumer (Baen has reprinted a bunch of his stuff–there should be some available on the Baen Free Library)
Christopher Anvil (ditto re Baen)
A Bertram Chandler (ditto re Baen)
E. E. Doc Smith (the all-time master of space opera)
Eric Frank Russell
James H. Schmitz (ditto re Baen)
Dragon’s Egg, by Robert Forward.
For an interesting look at different worlds, and aliens, I want to second the recommendation for The Mote in God’s Eye.
I’ll add recommendations for A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, both by Vernor Vinge. Fire was published first, but Deepness takes place prior to the action in Fire. I believe you can read each in any order - after all I read them in publication order - but some people seem to prefer reading Deepness first. Both works deal with humans encountering dangerous (and fascinating) aliens upon their own home worlds. Fire also has a hilarious (and poignant) send-up of Usenet communications woven through the story that’s probably going to feel a bit dated today.
Another satisfying book dealing with alien relations is Eric Flint’s (With K.D. Wentworth) The Course of Empire, which is available to read as a free ebook here. The action in the book begins 20 years after the alien Jao have conquered Earth.
(For that matter, browsing about Baen’s Free Library is a good way to get a feel for some of the other authors mentioned in this thread. For example, Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Mountains of Mourning is available to read there for free - and serves as a decent introduction to Miles Vorkosigan, and Barrayar. If you want an introduction to David Drake’s works, the first of his RCN books With the Lightnings is available there - and the series is an excellent storyteller’s homage to the Aubrey/Maturin stories of Patrick O’Brien. I will admit it is a promotional endevour for the publisher: Baen Books, like any successful pusher, is a firm believer in the utility of telling people, “The first hit is free!”)
This recommendation is heartily seconded. I much prefer Fire to Deepness but both are great.
(And it seems fairly insane to me to think one should read deepness first–but explaining why would involve minor spoilers so I won’t go into it.)
I should have been more explicit - I think reading Fire first is going to be more satisfying, too.
People should keep in mind there are a lot of great SF works that a novice SF reader might not appreciate. I like Peter Hamilton, for example, but the man takes a thousand pages just to get a story started. And many SF tropes are old-hat to regular readers but can overwhelm somebody new to science fiction. Remember to keep the recommendations accessible to somebody who’s just starting out in the genre.
I’d actually go straight for the classics and suggest The Martian Chronicles.
And I’m personally a big fan of Cyril Kornbluth—The Adventurer is on Gutenberg (and a creepy favorite of mine 
), but you can get the complete collection of his stories on Amazon. “The Marching Morons” is his better known work, but I’ll also recommend “That Share of Glory” and “The Mindworm,” too.