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

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.

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.

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, ]

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.

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

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.

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.

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..

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

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.

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.