Bah, where to start? Anything by Gene Wolfe. M. John Harrison has written some fabulous stuff like Nova Swing. China Mieville of course. Jeff Vandermeer, altho he's not to everyone's taste. Charles Stross for some lighter stuff. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi was very good.

Anyone like Elizabeth Moon? She writes some lovely sword and sorcery stuff (Paksworld) which includes some good realism (having to stop a mercenary troop to rebuild the road, people getting misunderstood, hurt, confused etc). She's an ex-marine and I love her writing. Also, she's written some 'space opera with fox-hunting', which has some good thoughts about collective responsibility, livelihoods, and politics, whilst basically being good fun ripping yarns.

Also I gotta point out Joan Slonczewski's "A door into ocean" which is one of my favourite books of all time. Eco-feminist bio-engineers get invaded by military-industrial-capitalists and kind-of win. Lots of real people, heart-wrenching situations, heroism of the realistic kind, ecology from the sharp end, and good talking points for nonviolent direct action training as well.

Never heard of either of them, thanks for the heads up!

I want to second Gene Wolfe, particularly the Book of the New Sun, though he's kind of universally great.

Well, Poul Andersen's The Broken Sword is good.  Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere as well -- It's his novelization of his script for the BBC miniseries.  Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series is very good, though it's less a real original and more an original use and reframe of genre tropes.  Simon R. Green's Nightside novels aren't particularly original or good in any deep sense, but they're really very fun and good reading for tired brains.

I'm going to be predictable and point people to Seanan McGuire's Toby Daye series, which I finally got to read the first four of for myself... instead of sleeping normal hours for a week.

-E-

Going away from Anglo writers, there's lots of other writers worth a read. Karel Čapek is great for early sci-fi - R.U.R. is a classic. Swede Karin Boye wrote the dystopia Kallocain in the 40s, well worth a read. From Norway you have Gert Nygaardshaug (not sure if he's translated to English) who does trippy crime sci-fi, Axel Jensen's Epp is also worth a read, if it's even translated...

Thanks everyone, lots of things I haven't heard of hurray! (re:Čapek you can get R.U.R. and the Insect Play in a cheap paperback pretty easily these days)

I love all the Gaiman novels and consider them all "fantasy", hidden gods and all... On a similar vein, I loved "Weaveworld" by Clive Barker. It had much in common with "Neverwhere", but I might like it a tiny bit more...

I was just reading something about Capek's War with the Newts. An adaptation for film? Hmmm. Probably not.

Edit to add: Possibly this BBC radio play.

Edit AGAIN to add: No, probably this film!

I can't recommend Catherynne M Valente's "Palimpsest" enough. It's a lush, almost surreal novel about another world visited only in dream, maps inscribed physically on the body of dream visitors, and delicious fantastical elements. Pretty much single handedly, it pulled my attention back toward fiction this year.

I just started Perdido Street Station, my first Mieville book, and it is excellent.

I can't believe it took you this long! Chances are if you like that you'll also like the rest of his work.

John Dies at the End by David Wong. 

You should not have touched this book with your bare hands.

NO, don’t put it down. It’s too late.

They’re watching you.

My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours.

You may not want to know about the things you’ll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it’s too late. You touched the book. You’re in the game. You’re under the eye.

The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.

 

The important thing is this:

The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. 

John and I never had the chance to say no. 

You still do.

Unfortunately for us, if you make the right choice, we’ll have a much harder time explaining how to fight off the otherworldly invasion currently threatening toenslave humanity.

            I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind:

 

None of this is was my fault."

Ah, JDatE is excellent. It's fun to play Spot the Urban Legend/cryptid etc. The trailer for the film looks great too.

I would like to chime in with the works of Margaret Atwood... I haven't read too much of her work, but couple of years back I read "Oryx and Crake" and the novel's follow-up, "The Year of the Flood". Both were fantastic, if you like bleak, post-apocalyptic stories. Although the author herself does not call the books science fiction (she prefers the term 'speculative fiction') I can easily place them into the genre.
Her book "The Handmaid's Tale" is even better, but is probably less 'sci/fi' and more of an alternate-timeline-in-the-near-future where the United States has become a complete totalitarian theocracy, brutally repressive of women. The story is chilling in that it is so believable in it's setup, and was most likely written as a serious cautionary tale.
Her writing, on the whole, is very stark, blunt and in-your-face, yet somehow subtle, if that makes any sense: The main protagonists seem quite unambitious, struggling just to get through events caused by powers beyond their ken, yet their insights on the world around them are what give the stories their impact.

Oh, I have to second Palimpsest.  There's a soundtrack album to go with it by S.J. Tucker.

I fucking hate that Atwood refuses the SF moniker, as if it would degrade her efforts.

Hey, has anybody read (or heard any opinions about) either the Harold Shea stories from the Forties by L. Sprague de Camp et al. or the totally unrelated Dragaera series by Steven Brust?
Brust has the awesome middle name Zoltán and the Shea stories have heroes who "utilize a system of symbolic logic to project themselves into the worlds they visit" so they are both on my radar, but I don't know if they are terrible or great, I'll let you know.

Handmaids Tale is amazing, and woundingly sad. I can't recommend it enough.

I think The Dragon and the George must have been a Harold Shea story... or, since it's not on that page, some kind of tribute. (Or, I *may* be sticking the mode of transport from one book into another book I was reading at around the same time.) The way I remember it, the "syllogismobile" is basically a kinda cool handwave for teleportation.

"I want to tell a story about a guy who gets stuck inside a medieval dragon's body" is the novel's real point. How'd he get stuck? He didn't memorize the formula properly.

Haven't read it since high school, though. I remember it being a fun one.

The more I google this, the more I'm sure I'm muddling up two separate books into one.

The Dragon and the George was a Gordon Dickson story.

Can't for the life of me remember how the hero got to the fantasy world.  Reading a grimoire?

Ah -- an astral projection project at the university.

He focused a bit too much on dragons when projecting.  "Angie - dragons.  Dragons - Angie."

quantum said: the totally unrelated Dragaera series by Steven Brust

I adore Steven Brust. If you enjoy his style of wit and can wrap your brain around the idea of a likable assassin, you should be in for a good time. They read quick, too. Just make sure not to try reading the Khaavren stuff till you have at least four or five of the Vlad Taltos novels under your belt.

The Machine Stops. CLASSIC.


ETA better link to the full text - prev was not the full text.