A complete guide to the Geek Hierarchy can be found at: The Big Geek Chart @ Brunching.com 

Has anyone else read Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber? I though that it was a really good book, one of the best I've read in a while.  One I recently read that was ok, was Orson Scott Card's Empire it was pretty good, but not nearly as good as the Ender books.

Besides being 'pretty good' what did you think of Empire? I saw it recently, but I haven't had time to read it.  Was it an easy, flowing read?  I've heard some bad reviews about it...

I loved ender's game... what a great book.

Wasn't as big a fan of Speaker for the Dead

I meant Empire, but I have been trying to get around to Enders Game.  Lately its been nothing at all or textbooks uhg.

It was well written, and I only said pretty good rather than great because for me the story just didn't seem to click like his other's do. As far as it being an easy flowing read, I thought it was, except for a few parts a fairly easy read, but it's really just personal preference, if you liked his other books, you'll probably like this one too.

The Last Question

Short story by Isaac Asimov, posted on the internet. Certainly a memorable ending 

Any Asimov fan here? I've read almost all the books (science fiction and nonfictions as well as short stories) by him. Isaac Asimov's robot series rocks!

Robert Anson Heinlein comes @ #2 in my most favorite sci-fi authors' list.

Asimov is on my list of things to read.... I'm very interested to see his view of tech

Asimov is actually one of the least techie of the great Science Fiction Authors.... his novels are about the broad scheme of patterns of society rather than having specific bias to future technologies (although his "Laws of Robotics" gave him a great technical scheme to play off and was adopted as a given by many other authors, it was still a method of exploring conflicting moral schemes and social constructs rather than as a way of prediction the course of technical development per se).

At a very broad outline level his rise and fall of the galactic empire is in effect the rise and fall of the Roman Empire...

With that said, some of his short stories are truly classic and they make him my #1 favorite in the field.

Early Heinlein and Arthur Clark are much more interesting in terms of "predictions' to be compared with today's realities... but take #2 and #3 respectively in terms of total enjoyment for me in this genre.  Other Authors that I love have far less of 'a sure thing' impact on me.... I'll like one work but not others for some reason or another.

You said it better than me Bric, and that is exactly why I wanna read his work

Any suggestions as to where I should start?

I think his  stories "pre Foundation 'Trilogy' " (single quote embedded in double quote - now there's a construct for you, but its hard to say 'trilogy' when there are 7 novels in the set. plus three in the series written by other authors Benford, Bear, and Brin ) are the best place to start.

These are sometimes referred to as the Galactic Empire Series and they are interesting and give a sense of perspective to the Foundation Three  (which I would read before reading the prequels  "Prelude to Foundation" and " Forward the Foundation")

so here's my list:

1. The Stars Like Dust
2. The Currents of Space
3. Pebble in the Sky
4. Foundation
5. Foundation and Empire
6. Foundation's Triumph

I also enjoyed his "Nemesis" which isn't directly tied into the foundation or robot series.

Excellent! Thanks Bric!

I read my way through the Foundation books one at a time from the school library, might have missed some sequels or prequels though, I think I read all of them though, plus some other Asimovs (some short story collections, other settings, stuff)

Ben Bova makes fairly good reading, he's written a book set around most of the other planets in the Solar System, and some of the larger moons of the gas giants, not so speculative about future tech though

Stephen Baxter's books are pretty amazing, some neat theories of time and space in there, and a sequel to 'The Time Machine' where the Morlocks have constructed a dyson sphere around the sun and live on the outside of it, using the energy to fuel a utopia-like existence, Evolution is good too, like a short history of everything 

Just recently read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Great book I thought, got kinda.. allegorical towards the end 

Also been reading the Neanderthal Parallax (a trilogy) by Robert J Sawyer, about a quantum computing accident in a parallel universe sending a Neanderthal (the dominant intelligent species in that parallel universe) through to our world, and the ensuing chaos, eventually leading to a permanent link between our worlds. Some of the contrasts drawn between our society and theirs became a little preachy at times (their world was free of war, violence, crime, pollution, disease... all based on solid reasoning in one way or another but it got a bit overbearing) still worth a read though