I love science fiction and it’s what I read most. The Expanse series by James SA Corey if you haven’t read it. Fantastic series!

A few other authors I’ve enjoyed:

• Megan E. O’Keefe
• Blake Crouch, Dark Matter was my first and favorite
• Any X-Files book
• Any Star Trek book
• Jessie Mihalik
• Kit Rocha, this is more dystopian
• John Scalzi, highly recommend The Kaiju Preservation Society but any of his books are good
• Michael Crichton has some good scifi adjacent almost believe it’s real life books
• The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
• Annalee Newitz
• The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Ok, that’s going through the last 4 years of my reading log lol

Anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

My two personal GOATs are A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. Both won Hugos, so they shouldn’t be tough to find.

To give the quick pitch without spoilers, they’re hard scifi space operas, but heavily character-driven and focused on a high degree of grounded physical realism. On top of being a competent writer, the author (recently deceased) was an active compsci and math professor, so the books have this wonderful feeling of rootedness — in that the technology reflects creations that humans might realistically invent in the next few centuries if we don’t nuke ourselves up first. Also captures the vibe of how we ordinary humans would react and adapt to the consequences of our future tech.

It’s the fun adventure-narrative of Star Wars Episode 4 blended with the political intrigue and attention to space physics that The Expanse series leans into.

Might already be on your radar, but I’ll also toss out Vonnegut as a great choice for soft scifi… ignoring Timequake.

I loved House of the a Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

The dungeon crawler Carl series by Matt Dinnimin is fun and the audiobooks have great narration and is almost more like a radio play.

Ursula Le Guin, Jonathan Lethem, Philip K Dick, China Mieville and Iain M Banks are some of my favorites. Can't go wrong with most anything you pick up by them. Mostly within the scifi or speculative fiction genres

Can we recommend our own books?

Blue Are the Hills by Lilly Piper. Character-driven dystopian sci-fi.

Hope you have a great time!

The Annihilation trilogy (four books) by Jeff Vandermeer. The Expanse series by James S A Corey. The Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds. Murderbot by Martha Wells.

I recommend Neuromancer by William Gibson, since he is practically the origin point of cyberpunk. I have also been reading The Culture series recently, its not what I thought it was but its not boring.

You might be interested in the Revelation Space series by Alistair Reynolds. I think it's considered semi-hard science fiction, with most technologies being relatively possible according to our current understandings

Three body problem was super good. I'm stuck on the second of the three, it's a bit boring so far imo, but I've heard it's worth it because of the third. I need to pick it back up and power through

Have you read dune? If not I highly recommend

Charles de Lint has some fantastic urban fantasy novels/novellas. I really like CJ Cherryh's space novels - you could start with a fast read like Pride of Chanur or Merchanter's Luck before hitting longer novels like Downbelow Station. James P Hogan writes some good "hard" science fiction (iirc, he used to teach physics); he's probably best known for the Giant's Star trilogy (books 4&5 came later and I don't count them), but I like Thrice Upon a Time. I like Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series (the earlier books are better, imo) and Naomi Novik's Scholomance series.

I've never read much sci-fi but I did enjoy Ack-Ack Macaque and it's sequel Hive Monkey by Gareth L Powell (i've not read the 3rd book Macaque Attack yet). Here's a blurb for the trilogy:

Life is good for Ack-Ack Macaque. Every day the cynical, cigar-chomping, hard-drinking monkey climbs into his Spitfire to do battle with the waves of German ninjas parachuting over the gentle fields of Kent. But life is not all the joyous rattle of machine guns and the roar of the engine, as Ack-Ack is about to find out…

Because it is not 1944. It is the 21st century, in a world where France and Germany merged in the late 1950s, where nuclear-powered Zeppelins circle the globe, where technology is rapidly changing humanity, and Ack-Ack has lived his whole life in a videogame.

Ex-journalist Victoria Valois finds herself drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the man who butchered her husband and stole his electronic soul. The heir to the British throne is on the run after an illegal break-in at a research laboratory, and Ack-Ack has been rudely awakened from his game world to find the doomsday clock ticking towards Armageddon…

Two unlikely heroes and one mightily pissed-off monkey come together in a sci-fi trilogy full of action, adventure, bananas and bottles of rum

Iirc from last year, most books are $5 each. On the last days you can get a banker box $20.

I'd keep an eye out for James Tiptree Jr. (aka Alice Bradley Sheldon) and Neal Stephenson.

First Law series by Joe Abercrombie. Not sci-fi, but damn fun!

Anything by Peter Watts: the Rifter series, Blindsight; his hard science fiction, prose and moral philosophies examination is stunning and incredibly engaging.