An 'experimental' novel: if you like Borges, Robbe-Grillet or Joyce

An unputdownable metaphysical space opera whodunit, if you like Alexandre Dumas the father or Eric Ambler

A celebrant of small town America where something wicked this way comes: if you liked the films The Illustrated Man or Fahrenheit 451

Read his complete works, he's SF's greatest mind, but you've got to start somewhere: if you like Orwell or Kafka

Both a poignant tale of our inevitable decline and death and a critique of scientific irresponsibility: if you liked the film Charly

The most plausible aliens you'll ever encounter, from H G Wells to James Cameron

Orwell was that rare being, an honest thinker, whose essays shed light on every subject he touched. He worried, when 1984 came, if anyone would notice. Have you? (if it's all right with Big Brother)

One of the most original minds in SF, Sheckley is also a wit, parodist and satirist writing in the tradition of Voltaire's Candide

A mezmerisingly plotted time travel paradox tale, but with all the values associated with The Grapes of Wrath

Working in the tradition of Swift and Gogol, the Strugatskys have taken ideas of interdependance of species found in Darwin and moved them to a galactic setting

Read all the scientific romances and all the short stories. Wells stretches the definition of SF, a genre he helped to form (and which he didn't recognise). More TV Star Trek than Star Wars