Dan Simmons Hyperion, anything that has "The Shrike stands roughly three meters in height and is described as being composed of razorwire, thorns, blades, and cutting edges, having fingers like scalpels and long, curved toe blades. It is basically a gigantic, bladed killing machine." as a baddy in it has to be cool:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shrike

Oh, and Unto Leviathan by Richard Paul Russo (also known as Ship of Fools in the US) was quite terrifying but one of the best books I've ever read.

AndyP, this is about SF, not Fantasy 😉

Vurt – Jeff Noon
maybe too obvious but if you havent 'do androids dream of sleep' philip k dick
william gibson idoru

Ah, Vurt, what a great book…

The Peshwar Lanncers by S.M Stirling
Altered Carbon, Broken Angels & Woken Furies by Richard Morgan
Stealing Light, Nova War, Against Gravity by Gary Gibson

All Iain M Banks – Use of Weapons and Excession are great 🙂

Greg Bear – Queen of Angesl or the Forge of God / Anvil of Stars linked books. Darwins Radio is also pretty good byt damn depressing (makes Children of Men look like Playschool!)

JG Ballard – Millenium People

SSP

Kit – Member

Perdido Street Station – China Miéville

Not strictly sci-fi, more gothic fantasy horror with a bit of steam punk influence. But excellent, very dark, scary

Having got this for Christmas, I'm a good chunk of the way through this now and must say it is *excellent*. 🙂

Oh! Excellent thread. Its reminded me to go and source the lensman series for my own collection. As has been said – E.E. Doc Smith – the daddy of space opera.