Some of the Warhammer 40,000 books can be quite well-written
(although a few are crap). I recommend the entire Gaunt's Ghost
series and the Inquisitor Eisenhorn series by Dan Abnett. Also read
Horus Rising (Dan Abnett) and False Gods (Graham McNeil) to get a
stirring epic about about the origins of the Horus Heresy which
nearly tore the Emperor of Mankind's Imperium apart....and laying
the foundation for the current WH40K universe.
I also recommend Starship Trooper by Robert A. Heinlein....much
better than that movie of the same name which unfortunately mangled
the whole storyline.
If you would like a mix of horror and sci fi, you can try looking
for the compilation of stories by HP Lovecraft (and perhaps also
his contemporaries who expanded his work)...but his prose may be
quite heavy for those unused to early 20th century
literature.
I recently read John Wynham's Day of the Triffids and the sequel
Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark. Both very well-written and
thought-provoking.
Frank Herbert's Dune series is also a classic work of Sci Fi, and
is widely available at all good bookshops.
And lastly I recommend Colin Wilson's revolutionary book the Mind
Parasites...used to be a very rare and hard to find Sci Fi novel,
but with Amazon.com I think you will be able to get it.
