I love Sci Fi, but I'm not always certain I know what to read next. Here is a list of some of my favorite titles and authors (leaning towards NEW, TRULY CLASSIC, and VERY GOOD).
Classic Titles:
From the Earth to the Moon and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne. If you love Scifi, and want to know how the genre got started, you can't go wrong with these. They're fun, wacky, and every scifi writer has read them and drawn from them as they learned their craft.
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Good enough that they're still making it into a movie every few years. Classic and timeless, and very fun, even if you know the ending.
Have Spacesuit, Will Travel by Robert Heinlein. Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov are the Grandmasters of SciFi. If you have not read at least a couple of titles by each, you don't know science fiction. This is one of his best for teens (he wrote one teen scifi book a year for over a decade); others include Between Planets, Podkayne of Mars, Starbeast, Starman Jones, etc...
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. The adventures of Meg and Charles Murray are timeless (and not only because they travel in time). If you like your scifi on the philosophical side, this is just what you'll enjoy.
When the Tripods Came by John Christopher. This series is one that many of us who read when it was new will tell you started us reading science fiction. Invasion of the world, collapse of society, struggle for survival, and seeming hopelessness are the themes of this trilogy.
Very Good Science Fiction Titles:
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. An adult title that older teens should LOVE. Hilarity and world destruction in the style of Monte Python. Many sequels.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Military SF at its most brutal and realistic. First in a series.
Interstellar Pig by William Sleator. A game gone wrong provokes an interstellar incident that nearly destroys our world. A great farce.
The Giver by Lois Lowry. A boy on the edge of adulthood discovers that his perfect world is not as utopian as it seemed; will he be able to fit in, or will he have to make a frightening decision? One of my all-time favorite books. I think everyone should read it.
Warrior's Apprentice by Lois Bujold. Another adult novel, but the hero, Miles, is only 16. His adventures through space are madcap, delightful, terrifying and utterly real. You'll cheer for Miles as he struggles to find his place in a universe that seems determined to slap him down. First in a multivolume series.
New Science Fiction (from the last few years):
Feed by M. T. Anderson. A seriously dystopian world in which people are wirelessly hooked directly to their television feeds. A young man meets a very strange girl and begins to question his lifelong assumptions. Political satire of the very best kind.
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. The protagonist in this novel about government control and personal freedom lives in a world just beyond our own time; when Marcus' city is attacked by terrorists, he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and things go horribly bad, very quickly. Almost too true to believe, this is another one everyone needs to read.
Saga by Conor Costick. Sequel to Epic, but readable by itself. Erik finds a new game world, but to his shock, he discovers that the people who live there are not computer programs, but free-willed beings. And a dark power is set upon destroying him, them, and the whole world in which they exist. Exciting and action-packed, but thought provoking, too, like the very best Sci Fi.
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