I read sci-fi on airplanes, and what I seek is oblivion: a 700 page conquest of the galaxy that will take me all the way to London. Flight delayed, trapped for hours--I don't care, I'm somewhere in another galaxy. For this purpose, plot is everything, character development is optional, literary value counts for nothing.
Here are some suggestions if you share my tastes.
The original cyberpunk (I've heard he had predecessors, but I stand by my statement). Read Neuromancer and then follow Gibson's 21st century world as it develops in Burning Chrome Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. And when you read Neuromancer, realize that Gibson had essentially no first-hand experience of PCs at the time of writing. Then read today's headlines. Awesome.
Snow Crash catapulted Stephenson into the first rank of cyberpunk with Gibson, in my entirely subjective personal opinion. Laugh-out-loud zany crossed with ancient Sumerian myths by way of Jayne's bicameral consciousness. A tour de force.
Diamond Age proves it was no fluke. Great excursion through a world reshaped by nanotechnology. You'll never read a newspaper headline about China in quite the same way again.
Not quite in the same league but very entertaining and a charter member of the cyberpunk cohort. Try the Islands in the Net.
Sometimes a cyberpunk, sometimes not. Try Aristoi-particularly if you know what a mudra is.
Long, long, intense novels with great action. Try the Web of Spider trilogy.
Read The War Against the Chtorr series-4 novels published, 3 to go. Giant slugs from a planet a billion years older attack Earth by transforming its ecology to suit themselves-at least, I think that's the plot line. Grim but riveting.
Try the Gap series, beginning with The Real Story. Very emotionally intense, and a plot that really does require five novels to fully unfold.
The Honor Harrington series nicely updates the Hornblower classics with a female protagonist. Weber has a way with furious vengeance-I get an autonomous physiological reaction when I read those scenes.
Read The Last Dancer; or rather, find the earlier books in this series and read them first. The man has vision!