[troutman]

The Man In The High Castle (Dick) is an alternate history WWII book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962) is a science fictionalternate historynovel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It won a Hugo Award in 1963[1][2] and has since been translated into many languages.

The story of The Man in the High Castle, about daily life under totalitarian Fascist imperialism, occurs in 1962, fourteen years after the end of a longer Second World War (1939–1948). The victorious Axis Powers — Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany — are conducting intrigues against each other in North America, specifically in the former U.S., which surrendered to them once they had conquered Eurasia and destroyed the populaces of Africa

My favorite fantasy series:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen

The Malazan Book of the Fallen is an epic fantasy series written by Canadian author Steven Erikson, published in ten volumes beginning with the novel Gardens of the Moon. As of August 2009, nine novels in the series have been published leaving only the final volume forthcoming. Erikson's series is complex with a wide scope, and presents the narratives of a large cast of characters.[1][2][2][3][4][5] Erikson's plotting presents a complicated series of events in the world upon which the Malazan Empire is located. Each volume is relatively self-contained for the first five novels, in that the primary conflict of each novel is resolved within that novel. However, many underlying characters and events are interwoven throughout the works of the series, binding it together.

I'm currently reading Gateway by Pohl,

Gateway by Frederik Pohl
Gateway: an artifical spaceport, full of working interstellar ships left behind by the mysterious, vanished Heechee. They are easy to operate, but impossible to control -- some come back with discoveries which make their pilots rich; others return with their remains barely identifiable.


then Childhood's End by Clarke.

http://www.sfsite.com/12b/ce118.htm

http://www.sfsite.com/home.htm

http://www.sfsite.com/lists/award-hugo01.htm

The Hugo awards are presented at an evening ceremony during the World Science Fiction Convention. Nominations are as result of ballots cast by the convention members who vote by mail. They are counted using a weighted method whereby ballot entries, listed by preference, are assigned a value and then tallied. Those who fail to meet the cutoff or have the least number are dropped and the counting is redone until such time as a clear winner appears.