I enjoyed starting them chronologically; it gives you a tremendous sense of the world-building and character-building she does over time, to see people become parents and their children grow up, and the references back to how things were - amazing stuff.

I'm going to provide Amazon.com links, but if you actually want to get these in e-book format I'd recommend going through Baen Books, her publisher. They really do e-books right - no DRM, e-ARC copies, free library - they're notorious for having some of the worst cover art in the publishing industry, too. Like, hysterically funny bad covers. (Shouldn't be a selling point but I like them better for it. They're one of the smaller "big" sci-fi publishers, with a snarky fun attitude.)

I'd go in this order, if you want to go internally chronological:

Shards of Honor

Barrayar

The Warrior's Apprentice

The Vor Game

Cetaganda

Brothers in Arms

Borders of Infinity


Mirror Dance

Memory

Komarr

A Civil Campaign

Diplomatic Immunity

Cryoburn


Fair warning - it starts strong and ends strong, but a couple of the middle books can feel a bit like heavy slogging. Totally worth it, in the end, though, since everything in this series ties together so tightly that when you've read the whole thing, it's a joy to behold how she put it all together.

There are also three major side-stories that take place in the same universe, containing characters which directly influence the main family tree or the history of the universe.

Falling Free - takes place long before the other stories, and makes good backstory to one of the odder races in the Vorkosigaverse. Not as readable as the others, though, so maybe leave it until later.

Ethan of Athos - easily the easiest read of the side stories; interesting, and mostly unrelated to the other plots. Just the author's take on a concept, really, taken to its logical extreme. She does flesh out one character that would, in most universes, be a throwaway. IT's nice.

Captain Vorpatil's Alliance - apparently a LOT of people insisted on finishing up a story for this guy. This one seems like pure fanservice to me, like she threw up her hands and said "Fine! Ok, all right already, here. Now leave me alone about him already." It's still very good - her idea of bad writing is what most people think of as their good writing - but it's a fluffy little bit of spytastic nonsense, mostly.

Walter Jon Williams is quite an underrated author, IMO.

I love Voice Of The Whirlwind, which is kinda William Gibson, but in some ways (not all) better IMO.

Metropolitan has a very original setting - Williams says that it's not really sci-fi, but then it's not really fantasy, either. It's just a totally awesome piece of imagining, and a good story and characters to boot.

Angel Station is a first-contact tale and I really like the way he has created an alien life that is properly alien and different to us. Not only that but he spends time exploring that difference - it's not just an aside amongst many other aliens seen in passing, but it's important to the interaction with the humans and to the story.

What's great about Williams' work is that its really diverse, so if you don't like these books, you may very well like some of his other stuff - don't let a bad experience put you off him. I really want the guy to break out and be really successful.

Gregory Benford might be to your liking, Eater hits a lot of those old hard SF buttons in particular. The Hyperion Cantos may also do the trick. C.S. Friedman's In Conquest Born and This Alien Shore are favorites that have that classic sci-fi feeling.

I would also give Stephenson another shot.. it's really good stuff, but yeah Snow Crash is a little over-the-top (very much so for the first chapter or two, but it does settle down a good bit). I mean, the main character is named Hiro Protagonist... there's obviously going to be a certain level of tongue-in-cheek, self-aware ridiculousness going on, but it's quite amazing how well he foresaw much of the modern computing world. Cryptonomicon is awesome and is one of those rare books that somehow feels like science fiction even though there's nothing out of the ordinary in it. Anathem and Zodiac are also quite good and more traditional in tone and style.

You've got some great suggestions so far- I'd also suggest Old Man's War ...it's fun.

Legacy of Heorot is also a good, fun read.

Connie Willis writes great short stories, and The Doomsday Book is one of the better time travel books that I've read (especially if you have any interest in history).

One of my favourite things to do is to pick up short story anthologies at the library, which usually gives me a good idea of which authors I'd be interested in reading.

Top rated!

Most read

Top 5 most favorited, by %

unweighted results

Thank you everyone who voted. While I was graphing the results, (which you should definitely look at in more detail because there are more than 1 graphs ^), given the crazy number of you who said you love the Culture Series, I was pretty much scrambling to get a hold of it.

All calculations and graphics were made using Excel.

To complete the list, I used this compilation, and suggestions from both r/books and r/scifi.

Most Read: Hitchhiker's Guide, Ender's Game, 1984, Dune, Brave New World, in that order.

Least Read, most loved: Vorkosigan Saga, and A Fire upon the Deep

Highest rated: Hitchhiker's Guide/Culture Series (tie).

I've uploaded the raw data here.

Stand On Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit and The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner. Dystopian Science Fiction, but they are three of the best out there.

I am currently re-reading his book The Shockwave Rider, and it is very likely I might re-read these after it. He was such a unique writer of this genre and much of it is quite prescient.

This novel has been republished as a trade paper back recently too. I hope it will spark interest in all of his work.

**I just realized that I may have not been on topic, but these three books have been coined John Brunner's "American Trilogy" by some.

This one isn't very well known but it's fun:

Fredrik Pohl - The Voices of Heaven

And Ted Chiang's short story collection Stories of Your Life and Others has a really cool story about angel visitations. Actually all the stories are excellent, and two others deal with ideas from religious mythologies.

In addition to his Stranger in a Strange Land already mentioned, Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice is neat.

Whilst not exactly dystopian, I would still like to recommend The Windup Girl by Paulo Bacigalupi.

A great sci-fi novel set in the near future after significant ecological breakdown. Consider it almost a "post industrial" novel. And it's also set in a non-Western setting, which makes it even more interesting.

I really enjoyed it.

Player of Games is a good book, and it's early enough in the Culture series that Banks hadn't yet realized he made the Minds too powerful and doesn't need the human characters to actually do anything. But it is not military science fiction and I don't think it's similar to The Forever War.

If you're looking for more military sci-fi I can recommend Forging Zero, All You Need is Kill, David Weber's Honor Harrington series, Orphanage...and many more I'm sure. Armor is great and I'm sure you've heard of Starship Troopers.

A note on David Weber, I find his overuse of italics a constant irritation when reading his books. It really helps to get digital copies and run them through calibre to eliminate all the italics first.

<with a french waiters accent>

For madam,

I would propose either china miéville "Perdido..." or Robert Charles Wilson "spin". Both weave interesting believable characters within a good sf plot.

But If you want a page turner, I would say Eliantris or Warbreaker both by brandon sanderson. They're fantasy and really hard to put down.

In the end, I would propose "To say nothing of the dog" by connie Willis. Very clever and funny with a time travel theme.

</with a french waiters accent>

( Damn, I really liked to be a bookseller...)

I wrote a story that required two types of FTL travel. A hero sets out to terraform a planet so that it will be ready when the rest of the populace arrives. In the intervening years, the technology advances such that they are able to arrive before him and terraform and replant society. They then decide to send a rescue mission to save the presumed hero. Of course, things go horribly wrong.

The story is called SEED and it's in my collection of sci-fi stories that I just published titled: Progeny. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H3RBWTX/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 Free if you have Kindle Unlimited.

Ah man, I had this book growing up and loved it. So many small details, and enough to make you imagine what existed past the edges of the painting. Always enjoyed the Coruscant and Alderaan sections. One of my favorites from the book

And by watching the original, you mean (for the new consumer):
Purchase the DVD versions with the bonus discs, as the bonus discs are the closest to the original movie prints that exist on commercial DVD.

* Edit: These versions:

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Episode-IV-Widescreen/dp/B000FQJAIW/

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Episode-Versions-Widescreen/dp/B000FQJAJG/

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Episode-VI-Widescreen/dp/B000FQVX78/

Daredevil was amazingly well done for a superhero show on Netflix. Also, "Man in the High Castle" is an interesting series about if the Axis powers had won WWII. It's based on Phillip K. Dick's novel of the same name.

May not be exactly what you're looking for but book 1 is free on Amazon so easy to read and check out if you like it. Spinward Fringe.

Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins: A Collected Trilogy https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EPYUXA/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_D4E0CbQ2CTC3N

From the article I'm assuming you've read the other works of the authors you mentioned and probably the classics, so you're looking for some less well known authors.

Whenever someone mentions 'House of Suns' I point them towards Sister Alice by Robert Reed, definitely an author that doesn't get the recognition he deserves IMO.

I'm sure that this book is what inspired Alastair Reynolds to write House of Suns (I know he reads his books because ).

I hope the downvotes were more for my inartful and pretentious comment than against the book. Don't take my word for it though check out the reviews on Amazon. I like the book though because it blends classic space exploration scifi, like Heinlein, with more modern genetics, networking and computer technology speculation.

This is the best book I have read about humans being taken by an alien empire. This focuses on one group of people, and mostly one man, but it is an amazing work. Forging Zero - http://amzn.com/B00BTKA42Y

As already suggested, Scalzi's Old Man's War would fit. Alternatively, John Ringo's Troy Rising series, starting with Live Free or Die is both entertaining and quite similar to the ME series.

For those commenting the lack of women authors, I agree.

I suggest Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente. She has other interesting books as well.

ALso, I did not see Paolo Bacigalupis The Windup Girl mentioned, very good

If you really liked the hard science aspect of Contact, some scifi books I'd recommend are:

Marooned in Realtime - a detective story set 50 million years in the future; the characters are essentially castaways in time since they all happened to miss The Singularity

Fire Upon the Deep - a fantastic sci-fi novel centered on an attempt to prevent an "evil" AI from taking control of the entire Milky Way galaxy


Both books are by Vernor Vinge, a prof at Caltech, and the science is hands-down the best out there. And since Vinge can actually write, the characters and plot are also first-rate.

So, not a movie recommendation, but these books come as close to the experience of Contact, the movie, as anything I've encountered.

I recommend buying Ted Chiang's anthology
or the movie tie-in edition

Fantastic book!

Nobody has mentioned Iain M. Banks yet, so how about

The Algebraist

Excession

Against a Dark Background

Another military sci-fi novel with several unique twists would be Vernor Vinge's:
A Fire Upon the Deep


Hard to beat Ender's Game, though. Old Man's War is really good; Armor is good but kinda depressing.

I can think of lots more, reply if you'd like more suggestions :-)

Don't be disappointed, it came out today and turned out great. Joe Blake IS a book character, just the last name has been changed. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RSGIVVO/

Well they dont "Completely" focus on social and political effects, they are touched on and shown.

"Posleen War Series" AKA. The Legacy of Aldenata Series.
Starts with A Hymn Before Battle

The series is longish and has a definite Military Sci-fi bent.

"Troy Rising Series" Starts with

Live Free or Die

Again has Military Sci-Fi bent (Hell its the authors trademark imho.) but it does have some interesting things happening.

If you don't mind things set in our geography but with fantasy worlds added on there's:

The City and The City by China Mieville. I really didn't like it but lots of people do.

Not to give much away but towards your fantasy point [spoiler](/s"The story is set in a city that overlaps with another. There aren't other races etc though.")

Alternatively his Perdido Street Station has those of other species in something like our modern times.

Also I'm surprised to have not seen American Gods in here.

I have the Illustrated Star Wars Universe book that is full of his paintings and it is excellent. I love his art, it's got a sense of atmosphere that similar art often lacks.

https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Star-Wars-Universe/dp/0553374842

These are all terrific, and are either obscure or all-but forgotten:

Evolution's Darling by Scott Westerfield

Stone by Adam Roberts

Broken Time by Maggie Thomas

Double Star by Robert Heinlein (forgotten classic, but still terrific)

The God of the Labyrinth by Colin Wilson (creepy, trippy, near-pornographic, but also mind-blowing)

Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick

Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch

Carve the Sky by Alexander Joblokov

Metaplanetary by Tony Daniel

Marrow by Robert Reed

Entire and the Rose - The first book in the series is free on Kindle, this is an excellent example of world building. I wanted to continue reading this series, well beyond the time it ended. I wanted to know so much more about these worlds.

Spinward Fringe - First book in the series is also free on the Kindle, I'm only up to book 4 but it reminds me of a book version of Eve Online. If you enjoy epic space battles, fighting against corporate overlords and crazy science (very intelligent AI, cloning, etc) this is a great series to get into.

These two I recently read and enjoyed;

Three World Collide A short story about a human space ship encountering two very different aliens for the first time. Probably the best example I've read of how different aliens can be to humans and how we can deal with these differences.

Troy Rising by John Ringo A trilogy of books. It probably won't be considered a classic but it was very entertaining to read. It takes place in the near future where aliens make first contact and place a large "stargate" in orbit. The second aliens become trading partners and the third are more hostile.

Agreed. Those three books -- one for each entry in the Holy Trilogy -- have some of the most beautiful concept art I've ever seen. I also recommend The Illustrated Star Wars Universe.

C.S. Friedman's In Conquest Born-
She's normally a Fantasy writer, so I'm guessing the style will appeal to you, and the book is awesome.
http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Born-Daw-Book-Collectors/dp/0756400430

>it’s actually impossible to buy an official copy of Star Wars as it was first released.

?

EDIT: Yes, I'm aware the GOUT is "not as good" as a Blu-ray copy, but to say it's "impossible to find" is a total exaggeration. It's out there, it might not be in 4K, but it exists. This project is an impressive feat even without the hyperbole.

Check out the Spinward Fringe series by Randolph Lalonde. The original prequel (Origins) story is good space opera with an upbeat feel and the later broadcasts are are a little more dark and thought provoking as parts of the galaxy devolve into wars and power plays. Good stuff all around.

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Two-Disc-Widescreen-Theatrical/dp/B000FQJAIW

I picked up my copies in '06. The moment they mentioned a second disc, with the ORIGINAL movie on it (Not remastered. Didn't care, I loved lower quality VHS,) I knew it would be a purchase I had no choice but to make, as it would be the last opportunity for decades.

Spinwards Fringe, the first three books are free on Amazon Kindle.

Self published but good page turning spaceship battles. Every contact matters. Think Star Trek Kirk v Khan tactics.

UK clicky

Perdido Street Station is realtively new and quite interesting.

[Stories of Your Life and Others
by Ted Chiang]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0048EKOP0/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title)

Tower of Babylon is a good one. It was featured in Omni magazine back in the early 90's.

C.S.Friedman's [In Conquest Born] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0756400430). The societies (one male lead, one female lead) are interesting.

Check out The Windup Girl, it's the closest thing I can think of that reminds me of The Diamond Age. Aside from Snow Crash, of course.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0765348276?pc_redir=1412323595&robot_redir=1

Walter Jon Williams is kind of under-appreciated IMO:

Hardwired

Voice of the Whirlwind

Angel Station

Currently reading: Lyonesse by Jack Vance.

Next up: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi or The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg.

Spinward Fringe by Randolfph Lalonde

Only problem is only the first one is free and it is part of a series. Also it is written by a new writer so there are a lot of grammatical errors but it also makes for a very original series so I look past the mistakes.

The Windup Girl? Takes place in Thailand, the big bad corporations are GM food corporations, main character is a young woman who is the product of genetic engineering.

• Armor - More ground base fighting in powersuits than in space - Second half of the book isn't very exciting - Audiobook is awesome
  
• The Forever War - War fought against aliens over a long period of time. Space and ground battles
  
• Old Man's War - Lots of advanced tech in these books with space battles and ground combat - This would probably be my first recommendation
  
• Currently reading Leviathan Wakes which is turning out to be pretty good