If you don't already know these books, I hope the following excerpts will make you want to seek them out and read them from start to finish. And then look for more.

H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, one of the early masterful works of science fiction, gave a chilling view of the far, far future . . .

Frank Herbert's Dune was a groundbreaking novel in which planetary ecology played a pivotal role . . .

Robert A. Heinlein's Have Spacesuit Will Travel forced a couple of kids to stand in defense of the Earth, against intergalactic superpowers...

Joan Vinge's The Snow Queen fused star-faring SF with anthropology and myth . . .

Joe Haldeman's The Forever War took the author's own war experience and turned it into a very believable conflict among the stars...

C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe introduced us to the marvelous world of Narnia . . .

Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight took us to another planet, with the most marvelous dragons . . .

Diane Duane's So You Want to be a Wizard shows us two New York City kids who must learn to become wizards - and the world depends on it...

Douglas Adams's Mostly Harmless keeps us laughing through Book Five of the "increasingly inaccurately named" Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy . . .