[SpardaSon21]

I'm flying cross-country out to Florida on Wednesday, and I need book options to keep me occupied on the plane ride and while I wait in the airport, and yes I'll be flying back but not for a week.   Any good sci-fi, cyberpunk, or fantasy choices I should buy before I leave?

Please don't mention J. R. R. Tolkein, George R. R. Martin, Starship Troopers, or Honor Harrington, okay?

[Thaeris]

Have you read Dune yet? It's standard sci-fi material for all nerds to read and contemplate upon at one point or other.

[karajorma]

Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game & Speaker for the Dead. If you haven't read them, you probably should.

[NGTM-1R]

The Inevitable Reworkings Or Relatives Of Starship Troopers

Armor, John Steakley.
Old Man's War, John Scalzi.
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman.

[Klaustrophobia]

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy



or an MP3 player like a normal person  

[Scotty]

BOLO! and Old Soldiers, both by David Weber (it's not Harrington, it counts!).

Actually, any of the Bolo series.

[IronBeer]

Echoing the recommendation for Dune. On another note, Wheel of Time is an excellent take on the epic-length fantasy genre. (Don't feel like elaborating right now)

[Scourge of Ages]

BOLO! and Old Soldiers, both by David Weber (it's not Harrington, it counts!).

Actually, any of the Bolo series.

Ditto for Bolo. Cool guys, those.

[BrotherBryon]

The Belgariad series by David Eddings isn't bad either if your looking for some decent non-Tolkien fantasy.

[Mongoose]

Elantris was a cool little fantasy novel I stumbled across.  And it's actually stand-alone, shockingly!

[NGTM-1R]

Actually, any of the Bolo series.

nthing this, for the honor of the regiment.

[LordMelvin]

On another note, Wheel of Time is an excellent take on the epic-length fantasy genre. (Don't feel like elaborating right now)

I respectfully disagree with this as a recommendation for a plane trip. The series is too ...crufty... to take on in a single-sitting type situation. A plane trip would be better served by something more episodic or one-offish, like the (occasionally bumpy but quite enjoyable) opening books of Jim Butchers' Dresden Files (urban fantasy, think painfully-out-of-his-depth-junior-Gandalf-meets-Sam-Spade) series or most of the early Vorkosigan 'verse books by Lois Bujold - I recommend Falling Free, a stand-alone book that deals with human genetic engineering and has a nice JohnCampbellian "Heroic Engineer" archetype character, and/or The Warrior's Apprentice, (available in the "Young Miles" paperback omnibus) an amusing take on the classic story of the Sorcerer's Apprentice (First there's one broom, then there're three, then there're ten, then there's a spaceship full of 'em...), or the pair of relatively short novels that make up the "Cordelia's Honor" paperback omnibus, a chronologically earlier work that (imho) fits best thematically as bookends around 'Warriors' Apprentice'.

TL;DR
Jim Butcher: 3 contemporary fantasy books, ~300 pages each: Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril
Lois Bujold: 4 space-opera sci-fi books, between 300 and 400 pages each: Falling Free, The Warriors' Apprentice (paperback omnibus 'Young Miles), Shards of Honor, Barrayar (both in 'Cordelia's Honor' paperback omnibus)

[IronBeer]

I respectfully disagree with this as a recommendation for a plane trip.

Mm. Didn't see the bit about a plane trip at first. Agreed- probably not the best choice for a domestic flight, but still a really good series.

[FekLeyrTarg]

I enjoyed reading the Wing Commander novels, especially End Run and Fleet Action.
I also recommend Timothy Zahn's Star Wars novels, especially the Thrawn Trilogy and the Star Trek: DS9 Millenium Trilogy by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens.

[SpardaSon21]

I forgot to mention no Star Wars.   Yeah, I've read pretty much all of those.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

The Foundation trilogy, by Asimov. A true science-fiction classic.

[SpardaSon21]

I'm going to go ahead and bookmark this thread since HLP is so awesome.

[Jeff Vader]

Have you read Alastair Reynolds? Is rather niec. Quite a few standalone books. Pushing Ice, for example.

[The E]

Personally, I would recommend the following:

-Player of Games, by Iain M Banks
The perfect entry drug into the Culture series.
-Leviathan Wakes, by James SA Corey
A rather intriguing mashup between a mundane space opera and a noir detective story.
-REAMDE, by Neal Stephenson
Hackers and gold farmers and russian gangsters and MMORPGs
-Accelerando, Glasshouse, Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
Rather fun reading, with added singularity exploration
-The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, The Fuller Memorandum, The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross
A mixture of Lovecraft, the BOFH stories, Dilbert, and spy fiction.

Finally, I would also recommend The Quantum Thief and The Fractal Prince, by Hannu Rajaniemi.
It's Arséne Lupin post-singularity, which is fun. Beware however that Rajaniemi absolutely expects you to be able to work out what he's saying without handholding and without a glossary, which makes for challenging, but also rewarding reading.

[deathfun]

It's not the genre you were talking about, but the Bourne Series is a good read