Culture series

The Culture series by Iain M. Banks. I actually randomly read Look to Windward years ago after being lent a copy. It stuck with me and recently started the series from the start. I'm up to Excession now. It's possibly the most "colourful" thing I've ever read. Often amazing, sometimes disturbing. The writing is second to none.

Pandoras star by Peter f Hamilton. This along with pushing ice and the culture series opened a new vast world for me. Will keep rereading them every few years

I'd recommend the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks. It contains some pretty powerful AIs.

My standing recommendation in the SciFi genre would be any Culture novel by Iain M. Banks. Truly utopian SciFi, and an interesting depiction of a post-labour, post-scarcity, post-human, AI-symbiotic, "human" civilisation. It's not hard SciFi, but close. Banks really understood that spaceship battles are about mass, velocity and energy, and technobabble doesn't save the day.

IMB is a yes. All of it. Devour. Much like the works of Steven Erikson (Not SF) they're fantastically detailed, which isn't everyone's taste. The Cyberiad is a trove of beauty, ridiculous, sublime, educational - touching on things as far apart as philosophy and maxwell's demon. Amazing that they're not even in English given the wonderous translation.

The Culture Series is definitely some of my favorite reading. You can really feel the humor.

Philip K. Dick (Ubik, Man in the high castle, Flow my tears the police man said) Frederik Pohl (Gateway, the Space Merchants) Ursula K. Le Guin (The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness) Iain M. Banks (Culture novels) You will find many Sci-Fi treasures by just going through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks

Well I'm definitely into sci-fi literature. There's simply nothing else nowadays (being in my early thirties) which can caught my attention and limited free time. It's hard to sum it up to a couple of favorites... If you prefer hardcore sci-fi over the rest - as I do, those are definitely first choices: - Iain M. Banks Culture books ("Excession" being the best of all to me) - Simmon's "Hyperion" and "Fall of Hyperion" Some authors managed to bring some good pieces of space-opera without being too much cheesy: - Hamilton and his Void books, - and, of course, Herbert and the Dune stuff. But I must warn the casual reader here: those kind of books can get really massive. Second choices - but still really good books, would be stuff written by great guys like Asimov ("Foundation"), OS Card ("Enders game") or RC Wilson ("Spin").

I've read all of his novels and must say I am an Ian M Banks addict. I've read some of his fiction as well which he publishes under Ian Banks. My favorite is The Use of Weapons. I liked Surface Detail but I do think you should read the Culture novels in the order they were written. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series