Good reads (Score 1)

I think Paul Auster is an excellent storyteller in the non-SF category. Check out Moon palace and The New York trilogy. Gave me plenty of sensawunda. It's "real" literature as well. YMMV.

Several SF favorites have already been mentioned several times. They can probably bear yet another repetition :

Vernor Vinge for the utterly fantastic A Fire upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky

George R.R. Martin for the excellent A Song of Ice and Fire series (in progress)

China Mieville for the dark, strange, gothic steampunk brick Perdido Street Station