Grass

You realize not a single person has mentioned a female author? Let's fix that: The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis Among Others by Jo Walton Feed by Mira Grant The Hunger Games! The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin Grass by Sheri S Tepper Gate of Ivrael and Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh And the fabulous space opera: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

If you like SciFi, I really recommend Ian M. Banks and his Culture Series. Here is a link to the "first" in the series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_Phlebas Basically to give you a flavour, imagine a utopian society where energy is basically free and run by super intelligent benevolent AIs. So basically the citizens have nothing to do but live a completely hedonistic life. Whenever they encounter "primitive" societies, they try to make them more human and civilized. Basically the opposite of the "prime directive". The organization responsible for that is called Contact. Unfortunately, in order to make these societies more humane they sometimes have to resort to some dirty tricks (like assassinating evil dictators, instigating civil wars, etc etc). The organization responsible for that is called "Special Circumstances". Another author I find great is Sheri Tepper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_S._Tepper SciFi with a feminist bent. Examples are Grass / and the Margarets. If you want something more acid, anything by Victor Pelevin. Buddha's little finger is brilliant.