If ya'll like Lovecraft, you'll love The House on the Borderlands (1908) by William Hope Hodgson. It's like Lovecraft but comprehensible and actually scary. Other than that: Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Yes, this is totally sci-fi/fantasy. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin. Too many graphic novels to name.
It's comic fantasy, not sci fi, but I just finished (and absolutely loved) the first two Jig the Goblin books by Jim C. Hines.
Anybody read The Lathe of Heaven by Ursala K. Le Guin? It's based in Portland and the story is really interesting.
I haven't read any science fiction in years (except maybe Robopocalypse, which was frankly a little too close to the bone) but when I did, Larry Niven was The Man. According to my Dad, who was a total SF nut, the best Sci-Fi novel ever (and he'd read Dune and Foundation and every Heinlein) was The Mote In God's Eye by Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I can say it was pretty damn gripping. And of course Ringworld was ripped off by Halo. Other series from my teens that were pretty kick-ass: The Many Colored Lands series by Julian May The Well of Souls series by Jack L. Chalker The Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison (probably even more dated than the others, but I enjoyed them back then).
Oh, and here's a name that every English person knows but who is strangely underappreciated over here: John Wyndham. He INVENTED the postapocalyptic novel, and perfected it at the same time, with Day of the Triffids (shamelessly ripped off by 28 Days Later), then went on to re-work it again and again with The Kraken Wakes, the Chrysalids and others. Read Day of the Triffids and marvel at how many of the tropes of things like the Walking Dead are already there.
