Sorting the SF shelf
Most SF readers know within thirty pages whether a book is theirs. The question is which sub-mode fits today. These are the picks our team uses to match readers to the right SF for the right week.
For hard-SF readers
Arthur C. Clarke's The Light of Other Days and The Trigger are the best entry points to late-Clarke conceptual SF. Michael Cassutt's Tango Midnight is the best near-future ISS procedural in print (1999, predating The Martian by 15 years). Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room! is the 1966 overpopulation novel that became Soylent Green.
For late-Heinlein readers
Read To Sail Beyond the Sunset first if you have not. It is the final World as Myth novel and arguably the best of the late Heinlein. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is the underread companion. Both work as standalones but reward reading Time Enough for Love first.
For space-opera readers
Iain M. Banks's The Algebraist is the strongest single-volume entry into the late-Banks deep-time mode (not Culture, but adjacent). For the Culture novels themselves, Use of Weapons and The Player of Games remain the entry points.
For Vorkosigan readers
Lois McMaster Bujold's Falling Free is the chronological first Vorkosigan novel (quaddie-engineer prequel). The natural reader entry is The Warrior's Apprentice. Paladin of Souls (her fantasy work) is the Hugo-Nebula-Locus winner and the right read between Vorkosigans.
For new-wave fantasy readers (yes, also)
Elizabeth Bear's Steles of the Sky finishes the Eternal Sky trilogy (Mongol-empire-inspired secondary world). The right entry is Range of Ghosts; Steles is the resolution that justifies the journey. SF readers tend to like the trilogy more than fantasy readers do.