Edited by author 05-21-2003 02:48 PM
Anything by Jonathan Lethem, but mostly Motherless Brooklyn or Girl in Landscape. Motherless is the story of a driver turned detective suffering from Tourettes. Girl is about a family's move to an untamed and mostly ungoverned colonial planet. Both of them are, as Lethem's books seem to all be, wild and absurd rides through very human personalities.

I'm eagerly awaiting his new book Fortress of Solitude,.

Also, China Mieville's two New Crobuzon books: Perdido Street Station and The Scar. Mieville's prose makes me shiver.

One more: Sameul Delany's Babel-17 / Empire Star. It's two books in one. The first, Babel-17 is about a language virus. The second, Empire Star (which is read by flipping the book over and starting from the other side) is a swashbuckling space serial written by one of the characters from Babel-17.