Steven Brust: The Taltos novels (Jhereg, Yendi, etc.)

Greg Bear: Moving Mars, Eon, Eternity

C.J. Cherryh: The Chanur novels (The Pride of Chanur, etc.)

All far, far above the norm.

* Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), which is so good at exploring Martian issues that you’ll be disoriented when you finish and realize nobody’s up there yet.

* Asimov’s Foundation series, for its wild house-of-cards style vision with appropriate surprises.

* The first seven books of Dune by Frank Herbert. An ecological, political, and spiritual epic. One neat thing about Dune is that the strangest aliens in these stories are other humans.

* Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card the Increasingly Grouchy. His short stories published in “Maps in a Mirror” are fun too, especially if you like morality plays. Beware later books in the “Ender’s” series; Card’s characters become stooges to his own politics and patronizingly lecture the reader. However, the first two books remain my primary counterexample to those who say SF is action, sex, and oh, a spaceship.

* Anything by Neal Stephenson, but especially Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. His style is so loaded with rigorously witty characterization that you’ll be grabbing people you don’t know to share some clever bit with them.

The “So You Want to Be a Wizard?” series by Diane Duane, another series for young readers that builds off of the old “So You Want to Be a…” educational books. Urban fantasy for younger readers, but with a more mature storyline.

And “Jack of Kinrowan” and “Someplace to be Flying” by Charles deLint (or, again, anything by deLint). DeLint started his career copying Tolkien, but quickly moved into his own style. He is now considered the father of urban fantasy, and his only competition in the genre as far as I can tell is Neil Gaiman with “American Gods” and “Neverwhere.” “Kinrowan” focuses on a modern-day artist who discovers that she is the modern-day equivalent of Jack - the human trickster figure - and that she is one of few humans who can see and interact with the creatures of myth who still live all about us. Which also means that she’s vulnerable to attack from the more wicked of them, as well. The Kinrowan books build primarily off of Celtic folklore.

“Someplace to be Flying” builds more off of Native American folklore and is a book about the animal people - people who are not people and not truly animals, but who were the animals before the animals became mortal. The title and the plot build off of one of the many creation myths of early America - that Raven created the world so that he would have someplace to fly.

Gee, maybe I should have posted this as a separate entry….

Susan Cooper’s “The Dark Is Rising” series. a

David Eddings’ “The Belgariad” and “The Mallorian” (Blatant Tolkien rip-offs, but entertaining non-the-less)

Terry Prattchet’s Discworld series - You could call it ‘Speculative Comedy’