- Saga of the Exiles by Julian May, which merges science fiction with folklore/fantasy in Pliocene Earth

- Hyperion by Dan Simmons, excellent SF with a feel of the Canterbury Tales about it

- Neuromancer by William Gibson, plus the follow-ups (all the Sprawl) are very good too

- The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, about the eco collapse of the US in the 1980s (10 years after it was written) and which William Gibson called a "brilliant novel"

And a couple of guilty pleasures:

- Venus Equilateral by George O Smith, 1940s stories based around a three mile long space station at the L4 point in space, a bit like Babylon 5 meets DS9 in the era of vacuum tubes

- Necrotech by KC Alexander, a brutal and obscene body-mod cyberpunk dystopia (the sequel of which, Nanoshock, has a superbly offensive opening sentence)

- Halcyon Drift by Brian Stableford, about a corporate dystopia and a pilot who hooks up his body to merge with his ship (a bit blase now but less so then, especially as I had read far less at the time)

- Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony, a 6 book series following the rise of a refugee to becoming the Tyrant of Jupiter