Since we all play this game, we must have some kind of appreciation for Sci-Fi. Anyone have any good recommendations for novels, novellas, and short story compilations?

Personally, I recommend:
Scalzi, Old Man's War (and its subsequent sequels),
Asimov, Foundation series (very long, but at least read the first novel),
Clarke, The Odyssey series (again, a little long but read the first at least),
K ♥♥♥♥, A Scanner Darkly
Orwell, 1984
Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Anyone else have any other suggestions? Most of these novels (with the exception of Scalzi) are very very old, but they are very very classic. These books I picked are, imo, the best of the best by that author, but you should consider reading all of their collective works.

Also, if you like e-books I can give you (privately) directions to a good resource for--procuring--ebooks.

Vernor Vinge's stuff, especially A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are amazing.

Alastair Reynolds is great too but goes a bit too much on the hard-scifi side for me. My favorite of his stuff was probably Pushing Ice.

EDIT:
Wait, you're calling the Odyssey series long? It's what, three books, and they are all only a few hundred pages long. You can read those in a day or two. Great series otherwise, though.

Greg Bear's Forge of God and the sequel Anvil of the Stars are A++ ♥♥♥♥, would read again.

Also I've got more scifi books than most libraries.

Oddysey is four books btw. 2001, 2010, 2061, 3001.

Legendeer trilogy, sci-fi fantasy, was entertaining.

♥♥♥♥, I think I might have skipped 3001.

♥♥♥♥' 1984 FTW. Read it for the first time in english, I fell in love upon first read.

3001 also the longest because he reuses passages the least in this novel.

Jack Vance, The Demon Princes (the only series I can remember the name of, I am such a bad readerperson >_>)

I enjoyed pretty much anything I read from Jack Vance, but that series in particular.

1984 is the ♥♥♥♥
we got it assigned English 2 weeks ago, i finished it in like 3 hours i liked it so much.

Frank Herbert's Dune series.

Heinlein; Stranger in a strange land, moon is a harsh mistress.
Asimov; foundation, and i grew up on his explorers children series

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

1984 being required in school is pretty much the best thing ever.

Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Only the original three books though, 4 and 5 were kind of meh.

EDIT: Heck, ninja'd!

yeah, only good book assigned this year. me and my friends really had to push my teacher to get him to assign it.
edit;
If anyone writes twilight I will find them and hit them with a 2 by 4...
made of solid lead.

Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" Is still my favorite for some reason, no matter what other Sci-Fi I read.

I enjoyed David Marusek's Counting Heads and Mind Over Ship; they were pretty out there, compared to other books I'd read, so they both ended up as being pretty memorable.

I'd also recommend James Rollins' books; I've only read Amazonia and Deep Fathom, but I loved reading both, and his other books have gotten great reviews, too.

Also had a great time reading Songs of Chaos by S.N. Lewitt, it was a bit out there and unorthodox as far as science fiction goes, and it started off a bit slow, but reading it all the way through was more than worth it.

I love the Space Odyssey series so much.

Try The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester.