I'm always looking for recommendations, if you are looking for something good try the Mars series (red, blue, green) by Kim Stanley Robinson. I would also suggest Steven Baxter. He wrote In The Light of Other Days with Auther C. Clarke and it's a great read, I also just finished Evolution which is an increibly intresting book even it gets a little boring at times.
Dune by Frank Herbert (only read the original, no sequels)
Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
Timothy Zahn's star wars trilogy (the unofficial sequels to the originals)
Overall, I am unimpressed with the entire sci-fi genre. Alot of the old stand-bys (Nivens, Clarke, et al) I just don't care for at all.
Can't believe no one has mentioned "Enders Game." That has to be the best book I have ever read. The rest of the ender series sorta sucks. That is till Scott Card bad the parallel novels of Bean. How he perfectly wrote "Enders Shadow" which is the same story in Enders game from a different protaganist pov was wonderful. Then that spawned the whole Bean series which all have "Shadow" in the title. Great books, though the sequels are very political.
Just finished the Ender quartet, now moving on to the "Shadow" books as soon as I get off my lazy rear and get to a Barnes & Noble. I give Ender's Game a 9, but Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind (which are basically three parts of one book) gets a 7. They were interesting only to find out what was going to happen next.
I never could make myself read the books after Enders game cause it looked like it did what the DUNE series did with the sequals. Now the Bean series i find much more enjoyable.
My philosophy professor friggin loved the Ender quartet. Because that's a huge underlying theme to the series, philosophy. Every time he saw me reading one of the books, he'd be like, "Ooh, did you get to this part yet?" It was kinda annoying.
It was my second semester in college, and I didn't know what major I wanted yet, so I just took an easy philosophy course ("Great Questions of Philosophy") along with the core other classes that were required.
I loved the Intro to Philosophy course I took my first semester at college. Maybe it's because it was taught by this guy who lived with his family out at this cabin in the middle of the woods that had no electricity and only came into town to teach at the college and to buy food. I'm pretty sure he wasn't the Unabomber, but I'm not entirely sure.