Did you read any book of Arthur C Clarke?
so far, I read:
-2001: A Space Odyssey
-2010: Odyssey Two
-2061: Odyssey Three
-Rendezvous with Rama
-Rama II
so far all the books were great !
but they are not easy to find here in Portugal. I had to order 2061: Odyssey Three from UK...
the Space Odyssey books are much better then the films (they did 2001 and 2010), Usually book vs movie, book wins... in my point of view... and this is a big example.
Did you know that in the 2001 movie they went to Jupiter when in the book they went to Saturn? I think kubic had some tecnical problems to create the rings of saturn so they changed to jupiter, later, books 2 and 3 assume that they went to Jupiter and not saturn. I must read the 4th.
Rama saga is also excellent. in resume earth discovers that a huge cilinder with 50km is passing thru our solar system...