Neil Gaiman has been my go-to answer to this for a long time. I've read everything he's written since American Gods the day it came out, although my favorite book of his is still Neverwhere.
I've read most of the "classic" science fiction authors - and obviously the Big Three (Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke) are on my list, and I usually answer that I like Clarke the best, though I may have been shifting to Heinlein recently because he's such an interesting cat (how one guy could write both Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land kind of bends my mind - plus disguising a how-to manual on an anarchist revolution as a science fiction novel [The Moon is a Harsh Mistress] is magnificent).
More seriously, Orwell is fantastic, although I can't recommend his non-fiction enough (particularly Homage to Catalonia, there's one passage in here that, if you've read it, will make you tear up laughing, and others that will make you tear up crying).
I'm on kind of a Gore Vidal kick at the moment, both the fiction and non-fiction. I have a minor late Roman/Byzantine problem (read: obsession), so I read his novel about Julian the Apostate awhile back and am working on finding time to read more of his work.
I've read most of the "classic" science fiction authors - and obviously the Big Three (Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke) are on my list, and I usually answer that I like Clarke the best, though I may have been shifting to Heinlein recently because he's such an interesting cat (how one guy could write both Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land kind of bends my mind - plus disguising a how-to manual on an anarchist revolution as a science fiction novel [The Moon is a Harsh Mistress] is magnificent).
More seriously, Orwell is fantastic, although I can't recommend his non-fiction enough (particularly Homage to Catalonia, there's one passage in here that, if you've read it, will make you tear up laughing, and others that will make you tear up crying).
I'm on kind of a Gore Vidal kick at the moment, both the fiction and non-fiction. I have a minor late Roman/Byzantine problem (read: obsession), so I read his novel about Julian the Apostate awhile back and am working on finding time to read more of his work.
