The SciFi genre lends itself more to the short story and novella...at least for me.it does. That explains my fondness for Robert Sheckley and his humorous view of possibilities. "Does it feel good when I do this?" is one of my favorites.
I'm not a particuar fan of Dan Brown and find his pauses to deliver extended factoids really annoying. The fact that his first biggie was almost totally derivative of the non-fiction(?) "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" was particvularly irksome.

BTW, If I'm in a sour mood (if you spent close to 300 days a year on the road you'd get sour, too) I just pick up anything by Donald Westlake.