Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy might be another place to start.
Yes! Oh, I like that. Discworld, here I come!
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I was thinking of suggesting his Blue Ant trilogy (Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History).
They deal with a SF future that is basically here now. Gibson is maybe too concerned with technology and gadgets to be the sort of thing @Snowlark is looking for, but he sure brings the ideas.
He’s also about as quotable as Shakespeare.
“When you want to know how things really work, study them when they’re coming apart.”
― William Gibson, Zero History
“[Slitscan’s audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”
― William Gibson, Idoru
@Snowlark, read this page and see if it appeals.
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(I’ve also heard this called the “Bigend Cycle,” and I was also going to recommend it, but hesitated because it seems to be more fiction than science fiction.)
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Ijon Tichy FTW. You can’t beat a good tall tale.
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I found the quote I was thinking of earlier: “…speculative fiction of the very recent past.”
From an interview with Gibson: “Now I get up in the morning and check the newsfeed on my laptop and there’s all this material and its better material than I could make up. Crazier shit than anything I ever dreamed up. And I have a toolkit that was in large part provided by science fiction, and the toolkit turns out to be, I think, really good for getting a handle on the world today, which is not that easy to get a hold of.”
http://calitreview.com/263/william-gibson-the-father-of-cyberpunk/
So whatever you call it, he certainly was an SF writer, and is again in his latest book, The Peripheral. Cybertomato, cybertomahto. The trilogy could also be described as thrillers. Genre is slippery. 
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I’d be curious to see the dates for each of these. Some of his quotes are a bit overwritten but others are spare and unsparing. I’d think the latter were from later in his life.
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Have you tried the sequel to enders game speaker for the dead? That may interest you.
Looking over them, you’re probably right. Note that some are from his novels, and some, the more epigrammatic ones, from essays and interviews. His style has certainly evolved over the years. I prefer his later, less science fictional work.
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Great book really should reread it.
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The chrysalids is a good book. Set in a future long after our civilisation has collapsed it follows a society that lost most records bar the bible and weed out any deviation from the normal out of a fear of tribulation. It follows the story of a group of telepaths hiding in this society.
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Have you looked into buying anthologies of lots of different authors. Let you sort through find people you like.
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And this is why I will never tire of non-fiction. Even someone as imaginative and wizened as Gibson is gobsmacked at the personalities and narratives that emerge from our crazy world.
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Oof… i’m not entirely sure about that. Maybe the first one but i felt like throwing the latter books into a shredder a few times and i doubt i could reliably recall what happens. I think the lost city of z might be quite a good (non-fiction) primer in a weird way, the amazon must’ve felt like an alien landscape when you read the accounts of those early explorers.
I always struggle to think of recommendations when questions like this come up so umm… rendezvous with rama? Very accessible but no character conflict really, just professionals doing their job. The drama comes from the mystery and sensawonder of rama.
I’m editing in these as i go:
Ooh… involution ocean by bruce sterling. If a science fictional take on moby dick, set on a sea of fine dust in a crater, takes your fancy.
I would further the recommendation for flowers for algernon, the novel though as i’ve not read the short story.
Ted chiang’s short story collection is great actually - stories of your life and others.
Surprised nobody has recommended the left hand of darkness. Could also try the dispossessed seeing as you’re already in the ballpark.
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Why not some Octavia Butler… Some of her stuff is pretty intense, but Kindred is an excellent introduction to her work.
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I thought he wanted something with no plot, thought perhaps “incomprehensible plot” might fit 
(isn’t the movie version coming out soonish?)
OTOH, maybe something like Rendezvous with Rama?
(which I now see you just mentioned…)
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Well yeah maybe but i thought the first one was far more successful at achieving that i thought, the exploration of area x was really fascinating. There is a film soon, yeah. From alex garland so i’m looking forward to that.
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Would put a link to heinleins requiem but buggered if I can find one. Yes it’s very out of date but if you worry about that you’ve kind of missed the point.
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Also while I’m bugging this thread.
This might give you a range of options.
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Good idea and you get to start with the forever war - lucky reader.
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