Fiction has an impact on who we are, our narratives, and what we dream of as being possible. While science fiction has been my main joy in this area, many other genres have influenced my love for the art of writing. Here's my top list of books, but I have restricted it to the past few centuries, as otherwise it would just read Homer, Ovid, Virgil, etc. I mean you must read the Iliad and the Odyssey before anything else. The list also does not include non-fiction or borderline nonfiction such as Walden or The Cyclonopedia which otherwise would have made the list. Please note these are my favorites, in ranked order. Although I am not making a statement that these are the best of all time in their respective categories, you will find many of these on any reader's list.
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‍General Science Fiction:

1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Dune by Frank Herbert
Dawn by Octavia Butler
The Snow Queen by Joan Vinge
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

‍‍Space Opera:
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Matter by Iain M. Banks
Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks
City at the End of Time by Greg Bear
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

Cyberpunk:

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson
Trouble and Her Friends by Dr. Melissa Scott
The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
Hoshi and the Red City Circuit by Dr. Dora Raymaker
Noir by K. W. Jeter

Fantasy
:

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Lilith by George MacDonald
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente
Gauntlgyrm by R.A. Salvatore
The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

Short Stories
:

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
I, Robot a collection by Isaac Asimov
Conservation of Shadows, a collection by Yoon Ha Lee
Chronopolis by J. G. Ballard

Fine Literature:
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The Wind-up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
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Horror
/ Myth:

La Comedia Divinia - by Dante Alighieri
Paradise Lost by John Milton
‍Needful Kings by Stephen King
Lightning by Dean Koontz

Romance
:

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
IQ84 by Haruki Murakami

Poems:

RIme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Tylor Coleridge
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray
The Lady of Shallot by Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Elliot
An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope
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Happy reading!