Vernor Vinge --- A Fire Upon the Deep. (Also worth seeking out is the hugely influential novella "True Names", but you'd probably have to dig it out of a libra

Vernor Vinge --- A Fire Upon the Deep. (Also worth seeking out is the hugely influential novella "True Names", but you'd probably have to dig it out of a library someplace.) Neal Stephenson --- Cryptonomicon. (Present day setting, but with an SF sensibility; ties into his literally epic Baroque Cycle.) Charles Stross --- Halting State. (Investigation of an MMORPG bank breakin spills out into real-world skulduggery.) And an oddball that folks here may not have encountered: Mary Gentle --- Ash, A Secret History. (Starts off with interleaved narratives of a Joan of Arc figure in a strangely different medieval Europe, and a present-day Ph.D. researcher who's investigating her, and finding out that his sources literally don't say the same thing day to day. Then it gets... weirder. Quirky, brilliant, and kind of hard to find in the U.S.)