vurt - jeff noon
use of weapons - iain m. banks
perdido street station - china mieville
spin - robert charles wilson
the man in the high castle - phillip k. dick
the speed of dark - elizabeth moon
the man who melted - jack dann
revelation space - alistair reynolds

i'm not ashamed.

cheers.

pattern recogniition - william gibson

''virual light'' and ''mona lisa overdrive'' by william gibson are also good.

Isaac Asimov is good at robots:

The Caves of Steel
The Naked Sun
The Robots of Dawn

Greg Egan - Axiomatic & Luminous (short story collections), plus novels: Distress & Teranesia (near-future goodness), Permutation City (classic about virtual spaces of all sorts), Diaspora & Schild's Ladder (really hard and quite difficult far-future stuff, but fascinating)
Also on the Egan tip, there's quite a lot of his more recent short stories available to read on his website. I recommend Oceanic in particular.

KFK's recommedations are good! Spin won the Hugo award last year and is wonderful. Alastair Reynolds is always good value (if you like Arthur C Clarke you'd probably like him). He had two short story collections come out earlier this year too...

Charles Stross - Accelerando, Glasshouse, Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise (dip into these first as he's pretty full on... High-tech, slightly sardonic, gazillion-ideas-per-paragraph, but awesome if you like that sort of thing.)

There's lots & lots more, but of course your taste will differ from my taste, so who knows? I can recommend more if you like.

''last call'' by tim powers is amazing too. the other two books in that series aren't that great, but there's no need to read them.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi (not a classic like Dune but a great read)
Blood Music by Greg Bear

Blood Music is one of the books available as part of the Orion SF Masterworks series, which is re-releasing classic & very good sf.

Nice list there, Ken.

takes notes

i just grabbed a cyberpunk anthology, and i'd like some more of that million miles a minute stuff

also, early Heinlien is great - Starship Troopers, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, any of the Future History stories

Terry Dowling - Wormwood is an AMAZING book by a Sydney author. sooooo recomended

I have a heinlein book...ummm, it's called 'stranger in a strange land'- apparently a classic.

I also read 'Mars Red'....and just didn't get into it. Finished it but dont really feel compelled to read blue and green.

Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.

Mike Resnick's Kirinyaga.

China Mieville's Perdido Street Station.

I second Jeff Noon's ''Vurt'' and the Charles Stross titles Raven mentioned, and add Jeff Noon's ''Pixel Juice'' short story compilation to the discussion.

Also, John Brunner is good: Stand On Zanzibar and The Shockwave Rider in particular.

I quite enjoyed Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.

Also, science fiction is often at its best in the short-story/novella form. Find one of those 'best science fiction short stories of all time' kind of anthologies, and you probably can't go wrong.

I think that most things that Arthur C Clarke has written with other writers are great, especially the ones with Stephen Baxter.

In particular I enjoyed, The Trigger, The light of other days,

I have a heinlein book...ummm, it's called 'stranger in a strange land'- apparently a classic.

thats the name i couldn't remember. i also recomend 'Job: A Comedy of Justice'

Roger Zelazny's good... Lord of Light is great off-beat sci-fi

I would get a good Robert Sheckley short story collection, he's excitingly good.

Also JG Ballard's 60s and early 70s work is pretty astonishing if you're interested in pushing the boat out a bit.

David Brin - Earth

Awesome book that really stood the test of time so far:

Brin set this novel 50 years in the future from the time he was writing, using the book as an opportunity to predict what technologies might — at that future date — be taken for granted day to day. Three technologies he predicted, which were unheard of at the time, came to pass within only 8 years of the writing, include a media-centric, hypertext Internet, e-mail spam, and the proliferation of personal video recording devices.

David Brin's good reading... Google for his essays. they're fun

Micheal Moorcock's probably written some sci-fi. he's written everything else

Hey v I have it..if you desperate I can send you a copy.

I wrote a little stanza called ''laine the wayfarer'' the other day.

Laine the wayfarer is a short story from the dying earth which is also a song on fantasms I wrote. Infact fantasms is heaps inspired by Vance. Duh!

Laine the wayfarer is gold. One of jack vance best, but I have heaps of jack Vance let me know.

Shit, I scrolled down here to recommend Jack Vance, and I've been beat to it.

Dying Earth is fucking great. I bought it on a whim, and since then have read Languages of Pao, the Lyonesse trilogy (which everyone should read) and just started on the Alastor trilogy.

Perdido Street Station, as already recommended, was also damn good, couldn't put it down.

Stone by Adam Roberts was really enjoyable aswell.

just read the inner wheel by keith roberts, excellent and strange collection of three linked stories about telepathic homo superior types - beautifully written, very atmospheric

gotta chase up more by this guy, i read his short story monkey, pru and sal a while ago and it is one of the most powerful post-apocalyptic downers i've ever read

thread needs more china mieville love.

'the city & the city' was highly enjoyable, although a little hard to get into it was well worth persevering through.

now getting through bacigalupi's 'wind-up girl' as well which is great and a little intense. very similar in 'feel' to mieville.

I just finished reading through most of Cordwainer Smith's stuff and it's all gold. I even got a username out of it.

Gonna start Orson Scott Card's ''Ender's Game'' series, someone reassure me of what I'm getting into is great.

Nishiki - both of those were very good, I enjoyed. I like the way they transpose semi-realistic political intrigue into the future!

goldbuttons: I kind of recommend reading the Ender's Game and then Speaker of the Dead, and then leaving the rest? The third one in the series sort of lost the plot a bit. The Ender's Shadow novels about his brother are nice enough, but not essential, I think.

cool. Thanks hillsong!

Wait, Goldbuttons! No!

Ender's Game is a page-turner but unfortunately every page is filled with rebarbative shit.

i got my books out of storage and was like oooh ahhh..

heres my fav sci fi at the moment..not sci fi strictly, but yeah man sci fi......its very technical but wow the ideas..are out there..

'soviet writings on earth satellites and space travel'
first edition hardback published 1959 by macgibbon & kee
condition : i give it a 9/10 flapjacket shows signs of wear.

preface by ari sternfeld
paragraph 2.

''the launching of the Earth's first artificial satellites is a great victory for Soviet science and technology in the peaceful competition between the two systems of capitalisation and socialism. This victory was won thanks to the diligent organised labor of Soviet scientists, engineers and workers and to the unprecedented growth of science and technology in our country during the years of soviet power.''

anyone read 'Ready Player One' by Ernest Cline. Basically a sci-fi/computer geek homage to the 80's.

good page turner. very enjoyable and so many good memories. (it made me play zork, and watch WarGames).

The Takeshi Kovacs trilogy by Richard K Morgan is pretty good sci-fi-noir.

Just bought Reamde by Neal Stephenson - heard really good things about it and I loved Snow Crash.

Just bought Reamde by Neal Stephenson

I've just started on this, too. I feel like taking a few days off work to read it uninterrupted.

I haven't started for that very reason. I read snow crash in about 3 sessions. and i'd like to have a good couple of blocks set aside for this. ready player one was perfect for reading on the train, having a little smile to myself over the geek references, and enjoying some lighthearted fiction.

I love my kindle for the ability to get these books so cheap and just blast through them. RPO was like $7. Reamde was $8.80

I just bought it on the weekend as well, and also am waiting for some time to get it started properly. anathem was the last fiction book I read (earlier in the year)

ooo, aaa, virtual book club!

I got the hardcover from Book Depository for about $26, delivered, despite it being about the size and weight of two housebricks. The magic of the internet.

Don't get me wrong. I love my real books. But the kindle cheap books allow me to download a book I get recommended (either from boing boing or a friend) on the spot. I always tend to forget what recommendations i get.

What's the Neal Stephenson vibe?

I've only read Snow Crash.

Was fun yet serious sci-fi. Amusing inventiveness in the plot, with some strange references to many types of science, along with religion, politics, economics etc.

Its hard to tell whether he's a serious sci-fi writer or taking the piss some times. But in a good way. Its never taking itself too seriously, yet it takes itself seriously enough when it needs to.

Was a pretty good mix of cyber punk themes from neuromancer, with some johnny mnemonic stupidity thrown in.

Cool thanks, might check it out..

Oooh...this is the other boing boing recommendation I'm keeen on:

Daemon and Freedom™ comprise a two-part novel by the author Daniel Suarez about a distributed, persistent computer application, known as The Daemon, that begins to change the real world after the original programmer's death.

*keen with 3 e's apparently