1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe, and Everything, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless are the five books that make up Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide "trilogy." I read these books for the first time when I was about twelve, and I nearly died laughing. I own so many copies of these books, and I have owned even more since I first read them. These books. They are so funny. Seriously. If you haven't read the, go pick them up at the library or buy them or something and read them immediately. Go on. I'll wait. Then come back here and tell me how you died laughing.
2. Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
These two go together because they tell the same story from two different points of view with two different backstories. In Ender's Game, we meet and follow Ender Wiggin, the hero of the war against the Formics. He's a child selected for military training and, in the end, proves to be the military genius the international fleet was hoping for. In Ender's Shadow, we meet Bean, a street urchin from Rotterdam who is recruited into the Battle School and basically becomes Ender's right hand man. Each book stands alone as a brilliant piece of hard military science fiction, but the fact that they star children makes them, I think, far more thought-provoking than they would be if Ender and Bean were a couple of twenty-something Navy officers. We think of war as an adult thing, but here the Battle School exists to train very young children to do adult work. If you read none of the other books in the Ender series, these two are must-reads.
3. Heris Serrano trilogy by Elizabeth Moon
Heris Serrano probably deserves a post all to herself. At the very least, I should have included her in my Heroines post. She's strong, brave, competent, and a total badass. I discovered Elizabeth Moon's work when I was seriously considering joining the Navy, and I admired Captain Serrano for her leadership skills. She stars in Hunting Party, Sporting Chance, and Winning Colors, first as a disgraced officer from the Regular Space Service of the Familias Regnant hired on to command a rich old lady's personal yacht, then continuing in that role as she and Lady Cecelia foil various political plots, and finally as a restored commanding officer in the Fleet. The books are full of military action, political action, and fabulous character development.
4. Esmay Suiza trilogy by Elizabeth Moon
Once a Hero slightly overlaps Winning Colors, but focuses on Esmay Suiza, a junior officer in the RSS. Whereas Heris is an established adult, we actually get to watch Esmay grow up. Esmay's books--Once a Hero, Rules of Engagement, Change of Command--focus more on RSS military action, on the development of Esmay as a command officer, and on her character development. There aren't a lot of horses in this trilogy. I loved watching Esmay come into her own, and, of course, Elizabeth Moon's space navy action is second to none. As a bonus, check out Against the Odds, which is the seventh book in the Familias Regnant series.
5. Star Wars: X-Wing books by Mike Stackpole and Aaron Allston
I still remember the exact moment I became a Star Wars fan. We rented the first movie in the summer of 1997 because my dad wanted me to see the original films before he took me to see the re-release. It was the Battle of Yavin, and Garven Dreis (Red Leader) said, "Lock S-foils in attack position." The X-wings opened up and I was hooked. The series contains nine books and a tenth one is due out next year. Rogue Squadron, Wedge's Gamble, The Krytos Trap, The Bacta War, and Isard's Revenge (book eight, not five) were all written by Mike Stackpole, an astonishingly talented technical writer. Wraith Squadron, Iron Fist, Solo Command, and Starfighters of Adumar were all written by Aaron Allston, a writer I always imagine to be the bastard child of Mike Stackpole and Douglas Adams. They're a fantastic introduction to the Star Wars expanded universe even though they don't focus on the main characters of Luke, Leia, and Han. They're technically sound, full of compelling characters, and even if none of that is worth checking them out to you, Aaron Allston's humor should be.
6. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
Jules Verne is probably my favorite science fiction author. Journey to the Center of the Earth is a prime example of why. It's fun, it's adventurous, it's interesting, it's everything I like my science fiction to be and it places an emphasis on science. The thing about his books, though, is that you have to be careful. There are some crappy translated versions out there, and a bad translation can ruin your whole read.
7. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
At one point, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I loved Journey to the Center of the Earth, so I figured that a book about a submarine should be right up my alley. I didn't know the narwhal existed before I read this Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Captain Nemo is one of my favorite sci-fi characters of all time, so complex and compelling. What is most interesting, I think, about Verne's writing is how far ahead of its time it is. This book was written in the 1860s, and it stars a submarine. How cool is that?!
8. Shade's Children by Garth Nix
This is one of those books that haunts me. I read it twice in the late 1990s and I haven't touched it since, but I remember it, and thinking about it still creeps me out. Shade's Children is about an uploaded brain and personality and renegade teenagers in a post-apocalyptic world run by Big Baddies. Ella in particular caught my attention (I guess it's obvious that I have a type) and the Drum/Ella non-relationship has stuck with me. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone under about twelve or thirteen, but I bet if I were to go back and read it now, I would notice a ton of new things. This is a thoroughly creepy, fascinating novel.
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