For sci-fi:

• Dune (all the books) By Frank Herbert (and Brian Herbert now...)
• Hyperion By Dan Simmons
• Gibson Novels (Cyberpunk inventor) and books : Neuromancer, Burning Chrome...
• Almost all ASIMOV books
• The players of Null-A By Van Vogt
  (There's more in this book than just a story, the General Semantic topic is really WORTH studying...)

For historical novel :

• Musashi (A MUST READ!!!) By Eiji Yoshikawa
• Le comte de Monte Christo By Alexandre Dumas
  (Sorry I haven't found the english version, but this book will blow your mind,
  you can't talk about retaliation without reading this book first... ;-)

"Only Bad Coders Badly Code In Perl" (OBC2IP)