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[Vilanat]

My favourite Fantasy series - Malazan books of the fallen. witty characters, interesting "magic system", epic battles, politic schemes and questionable morality.

Sci fi series - either Dune or The Foundation, no need to elaborate here i guess.

3rd place - The Hyperion Cantos. everything in this book is simply inspiring. for example, imagine the ultra rich having houses where the interior doors and passages are separated by stargates that seamlessly and instantly transfer you to one of your rooms on other planets. wanna take a dump, you just walk to it and find yourself sitting on toilet floating on top a raft in the middle of a completely tranquil water covered world. care for a smoke? step out to the balcony that is situated on top of a beautiful fiord or a mountain peak. a major tourist attraction is a boat cruise that seamlessly sails through dozens of worlds across local rivers and oceans as if sailing through one long river. besides that, there is a vast amount of ideas injected into the series but it doesn't feel disjoint, it all fits perfectly well and i'd say that without one of its later philosophies being so kitch, i'd love it even more than Dune/The Foundation.

[redwallzyl]

i have read/listened to the audiobook of these to many times to remember.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belgariad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Malloreon

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elenium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tamuli

[chaotic skies]

So...I read sci-fi. My recommendations are anything Neal Asher if you're looking for transhuman, military sci-fi with a dash of monotrain-sized millipede, rogue AIs, crazy people, almost magically advanced tech, among other things. Seriously, it's pretty impressive.

For fantasy, I've recently been reading the Edge Chronicles. Can't remember who their by, and they're kind of childish, but they're good fun.

[Tack]

Spoiler: My favorite Fantasy Series (click to show/hide)

The Wheel of Time.

Spoiler: My favorite Sci-fi Series (click to show/hide)

Bio Of a Space Tyrant.

Any Questions?

I've not read those books, but their covers make me think that they are in some fashion following the exploits of a single person, rather than a wider field of view? Is that correct?
I'm not sure about those wheel of time books either, I've read about them, and had them recommended many times, but I wasn't able to find the time to read one through, but what I remember from the few chapters I read it seemed largely the same.
No... I think I remember that it followed multiple people around at once. They seem different than the science fiction books you mentioned, they had a much bigger scope and a very detailed mythology from what I know about them.
What draws you to the Wheel of Time books?

AHAHAHA no, that's pretty much the opposite of what The Wheel of Time is. Just off the top of my head, there's at least four central protagonists who get a large number of viewpoint chapters and about twenty capital-M major characters who get viewpoint chapters and are important actors in some component of the various plot threads taking place across most of a continent. It's beyond Turtledove levels of distributed storytelling.

Yeah wheel of time (starts extremely slowly but) has plenty of character-changing across the novels.
It does have a single 'CHOSEN ONE', but I think it subverts all of that pretty well when he goes batshit insane so I'd still recommend it even if 'hero-lit' isn't your thing.

[Sirus]

I recently picked up a sci-fi something called the Expanse trilogy, by a James S. A. Corey. It was on a whim; I had a bookstore gift card and it covered the price nicely. Haven't yet gotten around to starting it though ._.

I'll come back and fill in some more later. Too sleepy to start listing books.

[Parsely]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belgariad

I generally enjoyed them, but I thought the ending sucked. Not the actual events that happened, but more everything leading up to it?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Belgariad and Garion's aunt or whatever are constantly reminding Garion that everything that's about to happen is inevitable. They even tell you exactly what's going to happen at the end, and nothing is subverted. Exactly what you're told is going to happen actually happens, and it's just bleh. Boring.

[Willfor]

I recently picked up a sci-fi something called the Expanse trilogy, by a James S. A. Corey. It was on a whim; I had a bookstore gift card and it covered the price nicely. Haven't yet gotten around to starting it though ._.

I'll come back and fill in some more later. Too sleepy to start listing books.

There's a TV show, but I would recommend reading the book first regardless. :3

[Arx]

Oh hey, nobody's shilled The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu) yet. It's stunning. Sci-fi against a Chinese cultural backdrop, loaded with interesting concepts and fascinating ideas, and above all, it's very, very well-written and translated. I highly recommend it. It's the best sci-fi I've read this year, and it's competing with The Once and Future King for best genre fiction.

[Werdna]

I second the rec's for The Expanse (starts with Leviathan Wakes), Hyperion Cantos, The First Law series, and Fire Upon the Deep.  Loved them.

Some others you guys might be interested in:

Ian Banks' "Culture" novels.  If you like Dan Simmons' Hyperion, you'll enjoy these.  There's like a dozen of these, but they all read 100% stand-alone so no need to read in order.
Nexus trilogy, Ramez Naam.  Near-future cyber-punk.  College kids come up with drug that installs a networked OS in your brain.  If you liked Neuromancer try these.

Wool Omnibus, Hugh Howey.  More dystopian than sci-fi but really good.
The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi.  Near-future scifi eco-dystopian. 

Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch.  Very similar to Patrick Rothfuss, but with a much more entertaining/less Mary Sue-ish main character, IMHO. 

[miauw62]

red mars is an awesome book and you should read it.

[Aklyon]

PTR, maybe list books later.

I'm reading Children of Dune again. I understand it more now, mostly because of greater reading comprehension, but there are parts of it that are still quite impenetrable, and quite a few parts that only make sense once you make it through God-Emperor and know about the Golden Path.

Those two books are like the brick wall of whether or not you'll like dune. The first one is interesting, and there are interesting parts in later books, but good god does it slow to a crawl in terms of comprehensibility the first time.

[Sirus]

Okay, one series I read when I was younger. I don't remember if this was the official name and I can't remember the name of the author, but I believe it was called the Gap series. It was real nitty-gritty stuff, almost absurdly so at points. Aside from the local version of FTL (the eponymous Gap Drive) I remember it as rather hard sci-fi at points; artificial gravity is produced by spinning, and in more intense sequences there's a lot of attention paid to the stress of g-forces on ships and crew. The main characters were a couple of rival space pirates, a human navy crew-woman who got caught between the two, and a military administrator back on Earth.

When I say it was nitty-gritty, I mean it; profanity everywhere, loads of violence, sadistic scenes, quite a few rapes, aliens that specialize in body horror, you get the picture. Kinda amazed that my parents let me read it, heh. Also the plot was full of xanatos gambits and subterfuge and fake-outs, to the point where even in some characters' own minds you couldn't tell what they were planning or what their true loyalties were. I never did finish it, and now that the books are either in storage or lost over the years I probably never will.

[Flying Dice]

Okay, one series I read when I was younger. I don't remember if this was the official name and I can't remember the name of the author, but I believe it was called the Gap series. It was real nitty-gritty stuff, almost absurdly so at points. Aside from the local version of FTL (the eponymous Gap Drive) I remember it as rather hard sci-fi at points; artificial gravity is produced by spinning, and in more intense sequences there's a lot of attention paid to the stress of g-forces on ships and crew. The main characters were a couple of rival space pirates, a human navy crew-woman who got caught between the two, and a military administrator back on Earth.

When I say it was nitty-gritty, I mean it; profanity everywhere, loads of violence, sadistic scenes, quite a few rapes, aliens that specialize in body horror, you get the picture. Kinda amazed that my parents let me read it, heh. Also the plot was full of xanatos gambits and subterfuge and fake-outs, to the point where even in some characters' own minds you couldn't tell what they were planning or what their true loyalties were. I never did finish it, and now that the books are either in storage or lost over the years I probably never will.

These?

[Sirus]

Yes! That's the one.

Now I remember, we also had another series by the same author, the one about Thomas Covenant. I never actually read those but my dad was a big fan.

[Amperzand]

So, I would also recommend The Expanse, since it's good.

Another one I very much enjoyed is The Last Angel. Unpublished and somewhat unpolished forum-thing on Spacebattles, but honestly one of the better sci-fi stories I've read, ever, and what strikes me as a very interesting premise.