Scifi recs only from me - I don't do much horror.

Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld - he's the one who wrote the Uglies series (which, if you haven't read them, you should). :) This one's something of a space opera. It's got an undead (through technology) Emperor who can grant a sort of life-after-death and thus has created something of an elite caste. There's another 'sect' of people who worship planet-sized compound mind AIs. And there's romance, too. I love this author.

The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey - if you can find it - is another good one. Technology-assisted telekinetics who can move space ships. Also, a romance blooms when The Rowan receives a distress call from an unknown mind on a far off planet and helps him repel an alien invasion.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. A cyberpunk adventure. Virtual reality and the future of the information age. A classic novel of scifi.

Variable Star - this one was started by Heinlein years before his death but never finished. Spider Robinson (one of my favorite scifi writers) finished it. Epic space adventure. Guy runs from his present situation by joining a colony ship. Bad things happen. Twist. Even worse things. Twist. Nice resolution. I like both Heinlein and Robinson because they use music and humor in their works.

Thus - Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein. Classic of classic scifi. Aliens and god(s) and love and romance (these two things are different, ya know!) and crime and humanity.

The Callahan books by Spider Robinson. The Callahan Chronicles contain the first three books. I am such a fan of puns and this one delivers. It's about a bar that can only be found if you need to find it. They save the world. And get telepathic. Briefly. I love love love these books.

Enough for now? :)

These are great, Lissa! Thank you so much. It's so much nicer to get recommendations from people whose taste I respect, especially when those recommendations come with brief description-type summaries. :D

As for not reading much horror, can I ask why? I'm kind of a huge scaredy cat when it comes to fiction and/or movies, but I've found a few horror pieces I've really enjoyed, if you think you might like to sample them.

Horror movies I tend to stay far away from. That's my gut reaction, anyway. I don't like Halloween or the Freddy movies or Jason. But I liked 28 Days Later and I Am Legend.

I don't like Stephen King too much. But I have enjoyed some of Dean Koontz's books. And I like a lot of HP Lovecraft.

I haven't examined my thoughts about horror too closely. Like I said, my initial reaction to the horror genre is rather negative. But that is mostly in connection with movies. I do not like things popping up just for the scare factor. I'm not a fan of being negatively surprised visually - and this is something that predates the breaking & entering incident several years ago. Though that certainly didn't help.

Books are a different matter, I think. I'd be willing to take suggestions and add them to my list! Suggest away!

I can't watch horror movies, either, although I do enjoy psychological thrillers/suspense along the lines of I Am Legend and Silence of the Lambs. I much prefer horror that keeps me thinking to that which makes me terrified to go to bed.

I've never read Stephen King, but I've read one Dean Koontz book and I'm in the middle---or toward the end---of an H.P. Lovecraft book right now. I like the ideas in Lovecraft, but I'm not a big fan of his presentation. He's a bit too melodramatic for me to enjoy. But I've been reading him, and Koontz as well, at the behest of a friend of mine. (He who goes by Cyrano on this journal.) I don't think I ever would have dabbled in horror at all, actually, if it hadn't been for his recommendations. And it's actually those that I'd want to pass on.

Some of the stuff that I consider horror is perhaps better described as dark fantasy, but I'm going to include them anyway. 'Cuz I feel like it. :D So...on to the suggestions!

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb
This is a more recent publication, so you may already have read it. But in case you haven't: beautifully written ghost story told from the ghostly point of view, romance, discovery of self, poignant and metaphysical and thought-provoking. Perhaps more of a dark fantasy than horror, but the sense of something bad lurking in the character's past feels to me more like horror than fantasy.

Night Calls and Kindred Rites by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
These are almost impossible to find...but they're *wonderful*. Definitely more dark fantasy than horror, but I'm sticking 'em on here anyway because you would love them. Werewolves, the Wild Hunt, ghosts and hauntings, and one girl learning the Wise Arts. I can't even tell you how good these are.

Dark Ladies by Fritz Leiber
Two novellas in one volume. The Conjure Wife: 1920s academia, witchcraft, possession, and the perils of science in a not-so-scientific reality. Our Lady of Darkness: 1970s San Francisco, arcane texts, long-buried curses, and the perils of living in the wrong room when you have a fascination with the aforementioned texts and curses. These are chilling but in more of a psychological way. They end well and women are intriguingly essential to the resolution of both stories.

I've enjoyed a few others aside from these, but these are the ones I've loved the most, and these are the ones I'd most like to see others experience. So for the time being, I'll stop here.

See... I knew that some of what I've read might be considered at least near the horror genre! I really liked A Certain Slant of Light.

I'll have to see if I can find the others!

I guess if my horror has fantastical elements, I'm rather okay with it. It seems to me more 'dark fantasy' than 'horror.'

Also, Silence of the Lambs = good movie, too.

Hmm, House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski has that wierd expiremental vibe, and while I am not wild about the frame story, the interior story is very creepy, and very wierd. Not sure that you haven't read it before.

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Highly recomended. Lem is usually very funny, and clever wit as shown in his neumerous short stories. Solaris is all about physcological limits and confinement of a crew on a planetary station in the face of some otherworldy pressures.

You could look into Peter Straub. Houses Without Doors is his short story collection. Has some interesting stuff, hypnosis, predators, a possesed scholar, and it not as graphic as some of his novels.

The most frightening (only frightening) books I've ever read are
The Shining, Steven King ( I was jumpy during the day. it's all the irrational fears of childhood alive and breathing)
The Ammityville Horror (didn't sleep for a month)
This aweful book PLaymates, Abegail MacDaniels. wretched piece of crap but a scary look at the 9th basic plot line of doll comes to life.

Awesome! Thank you, Czarina! I've actually been considering reading House of Leaves, but it's so long that the idea of setting aside time to read it is a little intimidating. And I'd never heard of either Lem or Straub, but they both sound really good!

As for the other, truly frightening books...I'm not sure if I'm quite up to that weight yet. Although my dad has recommended Salem's Lot, so maybe I'll ease into the more intense horror stuff sooner than I think! :) Speaking of dolls coming to life, though, have you read the I Am Legend story collection? There's one story in there called "Prey" that reminded me of the X-Files episode that Stephen King penned---"Chinga"---with the evil doll. (...And the Hokey Pokey and the pencils and Mulder watching World's Deadliest Swarms and the Maine sheriff guy who kept saying, "Ayuh"...but you probably can't tell that's my favorite episode or anything. :D)

House of Leaves! That book was creepy. I actually wanted to re-read it recently and asked czarina to borrow it. If you read it, I'll have to re-read it so we can talk! I'm also curious to see what you think of Stranger in a Strange Land. The only scifi book I can think of at the moment is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which czarina also recommended to me, but I think you may have read that already.

And I can't think of anything horror that I've read recently (though since I haven't really read anything recently, that's not saying much.) I used to read Koontz and those type stories in high school but I can't remember any of them for the life of me now.

I've actually already tried to read Stranger in a Strange Land, but it just didn't click with me. There were interesting ideas ("grok" and that order of people/witnesses who only assert what they can see and make no assumptions about what they can't directly observe), but it just never seemed to go anywhere and when they got to the bit with the cannibalism, my 16-year-old self just rolled her eyes and moved on to another book. I'm not sure if I could pick it up again.

As for House of Leaves, I just finished a rather thorough round of recommendation reading, so it may be a bit before I dip into more recs. When I do, though, I promise I'll let you know so we can journey into the book together. I haven't read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, although I have read some of Philip K. Dick's short stories. And Elessar is a huge fan, so I know he'll chivvy me into reading more. :) (Plus, I really want to see Blade Runner, but I won't let myself until after I've read the book, so that's significant motivation in and of itself. :D)