Hmm, all those choices and no one ever mention "John Carter of Mars?" Written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the man who wrote Tarzan.

The first book "A Princess of Mars" was written around 1910 or so, and I am pretty sure it was a large influence on the whole genre of Sci-fi. I also read that Superman originally came from these books, and if you read them you'll know why.

Best Sci-fi I ever read.

Iain M Banks - Consider Plebas, Player of Games, and a bunch of others.

John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" and "The Ghost Brigade" are just like a typical 4x game.

The Forever War: Joe Haldeman
Armor: John Steakley
Starship Troopers: Robert Heinlein
Foundation series: Issac Asimov
All of these were mentioned before but they should be read.

Starhammer, a rather rare book since its out of print, is also worth a look at.

Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (A trilogy in five parts)

Get the latest edition and you also get Mostly Harmless included with it. Douglas Adams really is a genius, and you will see a lot of quotes from the game

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. It's not particularly long, but it is excellent. It's also the first instance of infantry being dropped from orbit to fight in powered combat suits, and Heinlein describes their tactics and equipment in great detail. (Think the armored infantry in Tribes/Tribes2 fighting the Zerg horde and you've got a good idea what that's like) It's enough to make me wish someone would make a game or movie adaptation that doesn't suck.

I second the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stannley Robinson (Blue & Green being the best) but also The Martians. It is a complement to the three books, but it is more a collection of text from the characters in the books. Interesting.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson as well. Very good Cyberpunk book.

I am finishing Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan and it is a great noir/action/detective scifi book, if you like that kind of novel.

Think it’s been mentioned but Alistair Reynolds is fantastic, Redemption Ark is probably the best but either Revelation Space or Chasm city it a good place to start

also Douglas Adams: Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy if you want a laugh

[ha, my first post, ]

If you like Peter F Hamilton, try Fallen Dragon. It was the book he put out right after The Naked God. I enjoyed it, though not as much as the Nights Dawn trilogy.

As far as military science fiction goes, I like the collaborative books by David Weber and Steve White, Such as In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, and others. Interestingly, there is a game out there loosely based on this series, I think its called Starfire, or -gasp- Starforce, or something, (or rather the books may have been based on the game), and GC2's primary "competitor", the Space Empires series, is also loosely based on that game which is based on those books. Or so I'm told. Anyway, lots of starship and fleet battles to be had by all.

"The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is one of the best "first contact" stories ever written.

I second Iain M Banks, particularly: State of the Art, Against a Dark Background, and Feersum Endjinn.
Ken MacLeod, the only man to use the word 'grep' in a non-computer context: Stone Canal, Cassini Division
anything by Stanislaw Lem.
Philip k Dick, and Ray Bradburys martian chronicles (which probably goes without saying).
Jonathan Lethem: Gun with Occasional Music.
Greg Bear: Forge of God, Anvil of Stars etc etc

Battletech
(not the new mechwarrior books)

WingCommander
EndRun and Fleet action were very good guilty pleasures to read (the rest were mostly bad)

World At War serries
more alt-history then Sci-Fi but it is all about Lizard Invaders from outerspace
(Harry Turtledove)

The first few books of the Honor Harrington are good, but the later ones aren't as good.

Stanislaw Lem, who just died yesterday

Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 series. He also came out with a time travel/ alt history series in collaboration with Baxter.

Samuel Delany wrote some excellent (more literary) science fiction as well.

Stanislaw Lem, who just died yesterday

I concur totally with your unhappy yellow head.

Reading this thread gets me angry with myself for playing the game instead of reading. So many books, so little time

Gotta mention James Hogan's Giants series and agree with the recomendation of Mote and the sequel Gripping hand by Niven and Pournelle, a first contact masterpiece. I love Niven's work but I am over the Ringworld series (there have been at least 6 of them) and I hope he is as well. The first couple of them were great but it turned into a Rishatra festival.

Anything by Vinge is a must read. The Peace War and Stranded in Real Time are incredible.


OBTW those of you that liked the Hyperion series, read Illium and Olympus, you won't be disappointed.
Naturally you can't be content until you have read everything that Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlien, Simak and P. K. Dick have written.

Wow, someone else read Samuel R. Delany! Cool... his early novels like Ballad of Beta 2, Babel-17, and Nova are great progressive 1960's space opera.

Yeah, I just finished reading Babel 17 about half an hour ago. Really wonderfully interesting book-- thoroughly enjoyable. I really love the way he writes, and how much control he has over his language. An excellent read. The only major problem with this particular book is that Sapir-Whorf was presented as being so deterministic..

I recommend Hyperion. Just the first two, unfortunately.

Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep", and David Brin's "Uplift" trilogy (the first one) are also very good.

Stephen Baxter's Ring novels are very, very good hard, hard, HARD scifi. His science is impeccable, but his ideas are awesome.

Like, if you thought that the Ringworld was a significant piece of technology, wait till you see HIS Ring!

So yeah, 'Ring' and 'Vacuum Diagrams' are bot hreally great books in the series.

Most of what has been mentioned so far is great, too. I'd also recommend Spider Robinson's Calahan's series for some great funny scifi

Mind if I mention Scrapped Princess? It's an SF book, but in Japanese, so possibly nobody in this thread will ever read it. Fortunately there is an anime adaptation, with English subs, that is quite excellent. Oddly enough, I can't think of any American SF book -> video transitions that went well... for example, Total Recall, Minority Report, and Blade Runner were all based on Philip K Dick books (or short stories), but none of them were nearly as good as his books. On the other hand, movies are short while anime series are long enough (typically 8 hours) to fit the entire book. Plus books don't come with awesome music

Stanislaw Lem, RIP 03/28/2006. He wrote a few classics. Solaris and Pirx the Pilot are classics.

Larry Niven was another author I liked.

Philip K Dicks was one of the most original.

I also like Fritz Leiber. Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser stories were his most popular, but he also wrote several sci-fi stories.

Eon - Greg Bear
Ringworld - Larry Niven
Man Kzin Wars (Insert # here) - Larry Niven

Cheers!

You even included Stanislaw Lem in the list. What am I to do? But surely, "The Cyberiad" by this author, was not mentioned? It's the stuff of legend. At least alternate legend. Hehe. Involves a giant calculating machine that goes crazy. It's retro-tech, but quite hilarious. It's another classic I say!

Yes, sadly... S. Lem is now one of the writers that wrote about the future, but left us in the past.

Regarding "Hyperion", I just picked the next title "Fall of Hyperion" up, because the cover looked fairly intriguing. Now that was the best random pick ever. It's up there with the best of Asimov. Oh happy days spent reading that... The first two books, as mentioned. Something happened with book three. It was not a total waste of time, but well... not quite essential.

You guys mentioned everything I can remember as good books. Including John Carter. Oh well. Good job.

Most of my suggestions have already been mentioned (great minds and all that ) But I'll second the following:

Iain M Banks - Culture novels, all of them great
Neal Asher - "Skinner" totally rocks
Ken MacLeod - If you like your sci-fi with radical/revolutionary politics
Vernor Vinge - Just wish he had more space opera-type novels
Dan Simmons - Hyperion series is one of my all time faves
Peter F Hamilton - Already mentioned multiple times, really nothing to add
Alastair Reynolds - "Revelation Space" is great
Stephen Baxter - Hard SF with some really big ideas, esp "Ring" and the Manifold series
John Birmingham - Not really relevant to GC2 but "Weapons of Choice" is really good. Remember that movie "The Final Countdown"? Now picture that but with a whole naval task force going back in time.

And the only author not mentioned yet is:
Scott Westerfeld - "Evolution's Darling" is amazing, one of my faves. And "Risen Empire" and "Killing of Worlds" are primo space opera. Can't wait for the third book!