Dune The Mote In God's Eye Rendezvous With Rama The Martian Chronicles War Of The Worlds Gridlinked Kil'n People The Forever War Eon Chindi Lots of others...
Stainless steel rat A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! Bill the intergalactic hero(only the first one, sci-fi/comedy) Witches of Chiswick(sci-fi/comedy) Red Dwarf Omnibus (infinity welcomes careful drivers + better then life, sci-fi comedy)
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Foundation by Issac Asimov The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury The Positronic Man by Issac Asimov And it just came out, but I very much enjoyed Triggers by Robert J. Sawyer.
Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy Ringworld Stainless Steel Rat Mission of Gravity Revelation Space I Am Legend Hyperion Beware of anything by Philip K Dick who (inho) had great ideas and stories but was a rotten writer regarding character, and Dune which I just didn't like.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention Only Superhuman by Christopher L. Bennett, coming soon from Tor. Shameless plug aside, some of my favorite classics include: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham The Martian Chronicles by Bradbury The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson Gather Darkness by Fritz Leiber. Among more modern authors, you can't really go wrong with Tim Powers, Peter Hamilton, Greg Bear, Tony Daniel. (Some of whom, yes, I have worked with in the past.)
Fredrik Pohl's Gateway saga are mangnificent page turners, and Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap Cycle ranks among the best space opera ever.
The Old Man's War series of books by John Scalzi. The original Foundation trilogy by Asimov. Not strictly sci-fi, but House of Leaves is brilliant.
David Gerrold's "The Man Who Folded Himself". And his more recent trilogy, "Jumping Off the Planet", "Bouncing Off the Moon", "Leaping to the Stars". Excellent! (The three books are also in an omnibus called "The Far Side of the Sky". A fourth book is currently being developed.) I also love Larry Niven's "Ringworld" and "Ringworld Engineers". There are kzint ("The Slaver Weapon", TAS) in them! I have the later books, but haven't read them yet. Lots of Niven novels and short stories are set in his "Known Space" universe.
^And "The Soft Weapon," the novella that was adapted into "The Slaver Weapon," is reprinted in the collections Neutron Star, Playgrounds of the Mind, and The Best of Larry Niven. There's also a whole series of shared-universe anthologies, The Man-Kzin Wars, out there.
Titan, Wizard, and Demon by John Varley. Anything by Neal Stephenson. Spin, Axis, and Vortex by Robert Charles Wilson. The Commonwealth universe (original duology + Void trilogy) by Peter F. Hamilton. Blindsight by Peter Watts. The series that begins with The January Dancer by Michael Flynn. ...but especially the first one, Varley's Gaea trilogy. I almost never see it mentioned in threads like this, but oh HOLY CRAP is it amazing. Anyone that's into Star Trek will love it, I pretty well guarantee, and in addition to having some of my favorite worldbuilding of all time, it's one of the most perfect trilogies I've ever read. Each book expands the scope of the tale by an apparent order of magnitude, like zooming out of the center of a painting to suddenly see the whole thing. It's brilliant.
I don't know if it'd really be Sci-Fi, but Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is awesome. I think it's generally considered fantasy, but it does deal with some sci-fi concepts like dark matter, parallel realities, and features some steampunkish tech in one of the worlds.
The earlier novels in Ben Bova's "Grand Tour" series, especially Mars, the Moon books, and the Asteroid Wars books. Considering that asteroid mining is in the news these days, I can't help hoping that Bova's take on the subject comes to pass eventually (but without so much violence - but human nature being what it is, that may be too optimistic a hope). Definitely Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Given the current state of U.S. politics/religion getting in each other's way and some of the bizarre stuff the various states are passing/trying to pass, the Republic of Gilead is all-too-possible. And Dune, of course - the books by Frank Herbert. The nu-Dune stuff is just nonsense and can't be considered a credible addition of canon material.
Thanks so much guys ive been researching all day and I'm going to start with the following after I finish DTI Forgotten History. Dune World War Z Rendezvous With Rama
I couldn't agree more with these two. I also just read and enjoyed Aldus Huxley's Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited. I am also a big Michael Crichton fan. His stuff may not be quite the same kind of SCI-FI your are talking about. He may be more in the science based thriller category. His books are really fun to read and he has been a big influence in my life. Also Stephen King is Considered a horror novelist, but I would say you could consider much of his work SCI-FI. He is incredible.
The Last World War series was a fun read. Not sure if they are "must reads" but I'm sure glad I did. The novel for Sphere was one of the first that I really got into in high school, that book just sucked me in - as opposed to the movie which just sucked. I really liked the Rama series from Arthur C. Clarke (last three of the four books written w/ Gentry Lee), & Nemesis by Asimov I really like along with many other of his works.