I would heartily recommend the Dan Simmons` Hyperion series to you if you`re not a fan of sci-fi as these books have no aliens and very little of the standard sci-fi fare, although there are space battles and some time travelling these are just background to the main story.
This series is basically about a war between mankind and the Technocore which are a collection of Artificial Intellegences which have removed themselves from the slavery they saw as their service to the human race.
To give you a bit of an idea of the scope of the story:
There`s a recreated John Keats the poet (actually there are a couple of those)
There`s a time travelling steel monster
There`s a women who not only becomes younger every day but loses her memory of when she was older.
There`s a priest who can`t die (actually there are a couple of those too)
A Messiah (she`s just a girl really)
Battles with evolved humans
A very well told story that certainly keeps the old grey cells working and I`ve read it a few times and I keep finding new facets to it all the time.
