Yeah–genre conventions are hard to work with. There certainly are authors who color within the lines, so to speak, but IMO they tend not to be the better authors. Sometimes you get a book with all the trappings (aliens, space ships, fancy gadgetry, etc.) that are excellent (Sparrow, as recommended above, is a marvel). More often, though, it’s the folks that pick and choose conventions, and then spin off from them to an original work, that capture my interest.
I’ll recommend books in a category that I’ll call quiet SF. These are works that are more about character than about spectacle. Nothing wrong with spectacle–Red Mars is an excellent book that’s very heavy on the spectacle–but I’m recommending something else. Most of these, if not all of them, have been recommended above; I just wanna gather them under this category.
Anything by Ursula LeGuin. Obviously I’m a big fan (given my username). Her action sequences are few and far between, and occasionally I’ve found myself 2/3 of the way through one of the scenes before I realize what tremendous violence has just happened. It’s all about the characters with her, characters and societies and their interactions. The Dispossessed is my favorite.
The Sparrow. Best SF I’ve read in a long time.
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. It has no trapping of science fiction, is instead in the category of speculative fiction: it asks the “what if?” question of what if Israel were a failed state? Excellent book.
Gosh, I thought there’d be more. I’ll try to think of some more in this category. I like this kind of book a lot.
Daniel