For SF I definitely second Niven and Heinlein -- although Heinlein is dated by now.

"Blue Adept" may be a little high on erotic-meter.

Absolutely hate "Stainless Steel Rat" -- at least the first book. It is not a SF world -- it is 1970's Middle America with spaceships pasted on. Everything that happened in this book could happen now -- in fact some things could not happen today because of the advances in forensics and surveillance since it was written! Later books are okay, but not great IMO.

For fantasy, you can't go wrong with Tolkien. Never read Pratchitt, altough I keep meaning to. Salvatore's "Driz'zt" books were a bore -- what fun is a hero who NEVER loses a confronation? However, Salvatore allowed other authors to write stories in his universe, and some of those are great! Six books of "War of the Spider Queen" series (in Salvatore's universe) are my absolute favorite fantasy -- and Driz'zt is thankfully absent

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

I will never forgive Brooks for Sword of Shannara, which is simply a blatant ripoff. Maybe his other Shannara books aren't, but I don't find Brooks a good enough writer to look at them.

Clarke is generally fine for a preadolescent reader. 2001, Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama, and Against the Fall of Night are all good reading. The stuff cowritten with other authors tends to be terrible, though.

In the fantasy department, LeGuin's Earthsea series is excellent; same goes for Tolkien's works.

Some of LeGuin's Ekumen stories are appropriate for children; others... well... aren't. Read Four Ways to Forgiveness and you'll know what I'm talking about. (In case you ask, no, The Left Hand of Darkness isn't anything like that. It's barely erotic at all.)

Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky is good.

You didn't read them all then. Drizzit got defeated on more then one occasion. He got captured by the Drow and was going to be tourtured to death untill Catti Brier rescued him. Then he got killed by Enteri and had to be brought back to life by the Drow.

What about Star Wars? Just spaceships pasted on a fantasy world. Niether technique tainted my enjoyment.

Starting with book TWO. Like I said before go look at the covers of the fantasy hardcovers out right now and you will see Tolkien references everywhere. You guys are being too hard on him anyway. Look at how the game HALO copied the space marines from the movie Aliens.

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Why did the cat fall off the roof?
Because he lost his mu.

I just destroyed the periodic table. I only recognize the element of surprise.

Did LeGuin rip off Tolkien when writing the Earthsea series?

Nope. (Rocannon's World seemed Tolkien-inspired, but the characters were not replicas of Tolkien's.)

Did Pullman rip off Tolkein in HDM?

Nope. (Though I did detect some inspiration from C.S. Lewis.)

Does Jack Vance rip off Tolkien in his fantasy stories?

Nope.

For that matter, did Stephen King rip off Tolkien in his Dark Tower series?

You guessed the answer... Nope. (Although that series jumped the shark rather fast, IMHO.)

That's a rather liberal use of the word "some." "The Subtle Knife" was basically "The Magician's Nephew" with action sequences, angels communing with PCs, and the I Ching instead of God.

Except for calling his universe "Mid-World," which is nothing like Middle-Earth whatsoever, and giving Blaine the Mono the exact same riddles that Bilbo and Gollum exchanged, and including a tempting, addictive seeing-stone that allowed you to see far away things as long as they were bad, and having the lord of evil's symbol being an eye on a flag, and Mia asking for "her precious," and, for that matter, both having a Dark Tower.

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I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Oh? My bad, then. Didn't read past the third book.

(Ah well, what can one expect from Stephen King...)

Though I don't remember Blaine giving the riddles from The Hobbit, not all of them anyway. "You've got to prime my pump, but it primes backwards" was definitely not on Gollum's list.

And I'm sure Stephen King'll admit it, too, given that he has such high respect for Tolkein. And Pratchett said that all fantasy is rearranging the furniture in Tolkein's attic. However, while I haven't gotten far into the Dark Tower either (and I really quite like King), it can't be as blatant "borrowing" as the Wheel of Time's "borrowing" of Arthurian legend. (You'd think he'd at least change the names instead of just the spelling!)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Speaking of fantasy for youngsters, I read Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series in my teens, and loved it.
Also good: Michael Ende's Neverending Story (the film adaptation isn't bad, but the book is so much better).

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

OK, that's a new one for me. It sounds rather different to Baxter's version...

Another one: Elidor by Alan Garner. Intended for children, and very surreal IMO. It's a fantasy, where the fantasy world intrudes on ours in odd ways. Not a unique idea, of course, but very well done.

EXTREMELY different... and dated by now.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

I didn't see this one mentioned:

ERAGON by Christopher Paolini

He liked it enough to want the sequel, ELDEST.

He read it after finishing Tolkien's Hobbitt AND LOTR.

Saw the hardack at Walmart for like 16-17, waiting for the soft.
here's his website:

Alagaesia

Ah, Eragon, opinions are divided on that, if you look at the Amazon.com reviews, most of them are slamming it for being very unoriginal and blatant ripping off pretty much every major fantasy series written. Which it is. If there's an orignal idea in that book, I haven't found it. But I though it was a pretty interesting read, and they good ideas he's stolen. It should be a good fantasy book for a young child, it's rather simplistic and they won't notice the ripoffness until they've read around abit more.

I can recomend Terry Pratchett as well. I'd suggest starting on the Nomes (Bromeliad) trilogy, those are still some of my favourite books, and were written primarily for children.

About Narnia, I thought they were good when I was 12 or so, but now (At 18) they're hoplessly cringe worthy and soaked in religious allusions that ruin it for me.

Anything by Tamora Pierce, but I prefer her earlier books, especially the Immortals series.

I'd also recomend the Tripods trilogy by John Christopher. Does anyone else remember this series, which is another one of my favourites?
[Edit:] Whoa! It seems that a tripods movie is being planned! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0447711/ Great news!

Er, at least three people already mentioned the Tripods series, starting with me.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Well, ya never know... Maybe she'll show up in Earth orbit demanding damages from ESA because Huygens ruined her perm.

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I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Well, in the book she DID say she can not move at all, except for minor orbital adjustments...

That's not what I meant by "dated", though. True, one dated concept is a 7-person spaceship arriving at Saturn apparently without a single unmanned probe preceding, but mostly I was thinking of the very "1970's feel" to the book. Free love and widespread drugs. Everyone on board the ship sleeps with everyone else (in series, not at once) except for two clones who are in an exclusive incestuous lesbian relationship (that's a mouthful!) -- and NASA is described as prudish! Apparently because NASA prefers the above facts not to be known to public. And if you think that streches the belief, cocaine is not only legal, but is allowed on board. I doubt any publisher today would touch such a book with a ten-foot pole for that reason alone.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.