Well, I suppose I *used* to play Dungeons and Dragons. It's hard to find a decent campaign now, and me and a buddy tried the fourth edition with a long distance gaming session and it sort of fell to the way side. I blame busy lives, and the fact that single player runs are hard to DM because you need a lot of NPCs to make it work well. Lots of work.
Good authors? Guy Gavriel Kay comes to mind for fantasy fiction, as do Charles Stross (hard sci fi), Jack McDevitt (more space-type sci fi), and the classics - Tolkien, Douglas Adams, Asimov (obviously), Robert Jordan, William Gibson, Orson Scott Card, and Greg Egan are also recommends.
There's way more stuff, but not really much sci fi other than that. Too many good authors in lots of other genres.
Someone once asked me what my top five all time sci fi movies would be. That's a tough one, mainly because I (again) don't watch a lot of sci fi other than some TV series. But, if i had to pick, I'd probably go with:
- Gattaca
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- Blade Runner
- Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
- A Clockwork Orange
I realize that I'm leaving out other great movies like Alien, and 2001: A Space Odessey, and The Matrix. Honestly, I could probably substitute any of those above (except for maybe Blade Runner) with these other ones. You should just see them all.