A science fiction list
info
Format for printing
Pirate modeIt originally came from here, but Lynn picked it up here, even though she herself only did a partial list here. It's a list of 100 Science Fiction Books You Just Have to Read. Now that is a list sure to inspire discontent and fury among the legions of skiffyites, but OK, I'll bite. Here's the list, with the ones I've read in bold, and a few comments on what I think of them.
1 Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke (Clarke's best, a classic.)2 Foundation, Isaac Asimov (Asimov just hasn't aged well—it's not exactly great writing.)
3 Dune, Frank Herbert (Phenomenal, but all the rest of the Dune books? Crap.)
4 The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick (Dick was a science fiction story in himself. This was a little less psycho than some of his other books, but it's still a good alternative history novel.)
5 Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein (Eh. At least it wasn't one of his Pompous Ego books.)
6 Valis, Philip K. Dick (Whoever made this list sure liked Dick. I like him too, but in small doses and by prescription only.)
7 Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Historical interest only.)
8 Gateway, Frederik Pohl
9 Space Merchants, Frederik Pohl (Two Pohls in a row? OK. I thought it was standard old fare, but otherwise alright.)
10 Earth Abides, George R. Stewart (A very moving book, and one that just seemed to come out of nowhere—I haven't read or seen anything else by the author. What happened? And what about Keith Roberts, author of Pavane?)
11 Cuckoo's Egg, C.J. Cherryh (I devour Cherryh. No one else takes quite that approach of really embedding the reader in an alien culture.)
12 Star Surgeon, James White (Another old guard standard. OK.)
13 The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick (What is it with the Dick mania?)
14 Radix, A. A. Attanasio
15 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke (Saw the movie and read this. It zinged me hard in junior high, but I've outgrown it.)
16 Ringworld, Larry Niven (Great, grand idea, but I hated the characters, and the sequels slowly sank into garbage.)
17 A Case of Conscience, James Blish
18 Last and First Man, Olaf Stapledon (The oddly grandiose style left me cold, and I liked the one with the dog better.)
19 The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham (A fun little horror story.)
20 Way Station, Clifford D. Simak (OK. City was better.)
21 More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon (Ted Sturgeon was a real liberal humanist who rescued me from misanthropy with his books.)
22 Gray Lensman, E.E. "Doc" Smith (Oh, lord. Smith? I can see that this was seminal stuff, but only because it's so old that no one had any other SF to read.)
23 The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov (I think I've read almost everything by Asimov, but this title draws a blank. One of his later books?)
24 The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin (Well written and original—great SF.)
25 Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock (This is a fun one to hand to Christians.)
26 Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon (Really, one Stapledon is enough for any list. Especially if they're going to leave off the one with the dog.)
27 The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells (Hasn't everyone read this?)
28 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne (I went through a major Verne jag in high school, and slurped up everything I could find in a month. Quaint, but fun.)
29 Heritage of Hastur, Marion Zimmer Bradley
30 The Time Machine, H. G. Wells (See comment to War of the Worlds.)
31 The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester (Read it, remember that I liked it…but it was at least 30 years ago.)
32 Slan, A. E. Van Vogt (One of those books with a special appeal to adolescent misfits with awkward tentacles.)
33 Neuromancer, William Gibson (Blew me away. Everything Gibson has written has been on my 'must read' list since.)
34 Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card (One of those books that you thoroughly enjoy reading, but once you stop and think about it, becomes increasingly disturbing.)
35 In Conquest Born, C. S. Friedman
36 Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny (One of my all-time favorites. Glorious.)
37 Eon, Greg Bear
38 Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey (OK. Probably appeals more to teenaged girls, and the Dragonwhatever sequels were just too much.)
39 Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne (Quaint.)
40 Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein (Read it in the early 1970s, thought it was great, but it was the first in Heinlein's interminable Pompous Ego books, which I despised—and the subsequent taint contaminated the earlier book in my mind.)
41 Cosm, Gregory Benford
42 The Voyage of the Space Beagle, A. E. Van Vogt (Another of those books I think I read long ago, but left no trace in my memory.)
43 Blood Music, Greg Bear (A very interesting book, but the biologist in me kept raising objections.)
44 Beggars in Spain, Nancy Kress (As above—sleeplessness just wouldn't do that. It was a struggle to surrender to the premise.)
45 Omnivore, Piers Anthony (Hack. I detest Anthony. My kids all went through a phase with those godawful Xanth books, and I've tried to look at some of his other, ubiquitous books…all badly written, pretentious trash.)
46 I, Robot, Isaac Asimov (A hit-or-miss collection of short stories.)
47 Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
48 To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer (This one was pretty good, although it's all one long paean to Farmer's inherent fannishness.)
49 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (Required reading. Really.)
50 The Man Who Folded Himself, David Gerrold (OK. Didn't thrill me.)
51 1984, George Orwell (With BNW, required reading.)
52 The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl And Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson (OK. I'd rather read Treasure Island.)
53 Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson ("Crash" refers to the way he ends his books, but otherwise, man, Stephenson is the best for imaginative thrill rides.)
54 Flesh, Philip Jose Farmer (A different end-of-the-world story.)
55 Cities in Flight, James Blish (Standard old-guard SF fare.)
56 Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe (Fantastic! I remember weighing this one in the book store, thinking, "oh, no, not another fantasy trilogy" and "but it's Wolfe!", and Wolfe won out. Fortunately.)
57 Startide Rising, David Brin (A phenomenal book with a fascinating premise and loads of promise for future installments...which did not pan out.)
58 Triton, Samuel R. Delany (Delaney is an author I find infuriating; I can never make up my mind about whether I love him or hate him.)
59 Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner (I used to have dreams about the situation in this book. )
60 A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess (The book is much better than the movie.)
61 Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (What a wonderfully delicate and well-handled indictment of censorship.)
62 A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr. (Good, and I especially appreciated its take on religion)
63 Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes (I read the original novella, but I don't think I've been able to bear reading the expanded novel. This one is the stuff of nightmares.)
64 No Blade of Grass, John Christopher (A terrific book that nicely makes us aware of something we take for granted.)
65 The Postman, David Brin (I got this book when I was a student at the University of Oregon, and was reading it in the student union when I came to the part of the story about a post-apocalyptic fight in the UO student union. Weird. Anyway, starts well, but the neo-hippie warrior stuff at the end was too much for even this Oregonian liberal hippie type to accept.)
66 Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany (Still struggling with my opinion of Delaney.)
67 Berserker, Fred Saberhagen (I liked the idea of von Neumann machines taking over the universe (as did a lot of people), but there wasn't a lot of depth to these stories otherwise.)
68 Flatland, Edwin Abbott Abbott (Another classic.)
69 Planiverse, A. K. Dewdney (I liked Abbott's version better.)
70 Dragon's Egg, Robert L. Forward (Too much physics. Forward's human characters are about as flat as the Cheela.)
71 Downbelow Station, C. J. Cherryh (If you're into sociopolitical drama, this is the one.)
72 Dawn, Octavia E. Butler
73 The Puppet Masters, Robert A. Heinlein (OK as a creepy alien invasion story. It wouldn't be on my list.)
74 The Doomsday Book, Connie Willis (I liked Lincoln's Dreams, so I suppose I should look this one up)
75 Forever War, Joe Haldeman (Depressing. Good, but not happy reading.)
76 Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison (Ellison does good pyrotechnics.)
77 Roadside Picnic, Arkady Strugatsky
78 The Snow Queen, Joan D. Vinge (Weren't there a couple of books set in this world? I read this one, but wasn't inspired to look up the others.)
79 The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
80 Drowned World, J.G. Ballard
81 Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut (I think everything by Vonnegut belons on this list.)
82 Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson (Interesting.)
83 Upanishads, Various (Um, what? Can we throw in the Bible here too, or is that more of a horror story?)
84 Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (We should just take this one for granted, I think.)
85 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (Read it several times) (Laughed all the way through it.)
86 The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin (Le Guin is another of those authors whose catalog ought to be here.)
87 The Midwich Cuckoos, John Wyndham (Creepy idea, but I don't know…Wyndham's writing is a little too mannered.)
88 Mutant, Henry Kuttner
89 Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
90 Ralph 124C41+, Hugo Gernsback (Absolutely dreadful. A joke. No wonder SF was a pariah genre if this was the kind of crap representing it.)
91 I Am Legend, Richard Matheson (Another good end-of-the-world story. What is it with SF and this sometimes grim look at the future?)
92 Timescape, Gregory Benford (Actually, I did read this one just last year, and for some reason the thing has completely fled my mind.)
93 The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester (Another of those weird books that did a fine job of screwing up my head.)
94 War with the Newts, Karl Kapek
95 Mars, Ben Bova (Engineering. Blah.)
96 Brain Wave, Poul Anderson (This was a wonderful idea—what if every creature on the planet had its intelligence suddenly jump a few notches?—but it didn't proceed very far with the premise.)
97 Hyperion, Dan Simmons (Isn't this one of those humungous thick books with eleventy-nine more like it on the shelf next to it? I think I've been intimidated from even trying.)
98 The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton (Crichton is an infuriating author, one of those guys who thinks they know a lot of science, but don't.)
99 Camp Concentration, Thomas M. Disch
100 A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs (My very first SF (fantasy?) book, handed to me by my father when I was in grade school, and which I would later read to him when he would take an afternoon rest. I am incapable of judging this one objectively.)
It's a strange list. I don't know if the order means anything (I sure hope the author isn't intending that Childhood's End, worthy as it may be, is the most important SF book out there). Some authors are overrepresented, in my opinion, and some, like Gernsback and Anthony, wouldn't belong here even if their presence wasn't taking up space that belongs to competent writers. And where are Banks and Powers and Sterling and Silverberg and Vinge, to name a few? There are several fantasy titles there, so why no mention of Pratchett?
Trackback url: http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/1094/GDk11i0j/
Yes, many of my favourites there. Though I'm not near my groaning SF bookshelf to be sure what's missing, I'd add
from memory:
"Counterfeit World aka Simulacron-3" Daniel Galouye, 1964.
-- Computer programmer works on a 1:1 simulated world, only
-- to discover that his world ... (spoiler deleted). It
-- was Brian Aldiss, I think, who commented that it was a
-- wonder that Phil Dick didn't get to this nicely paranoid
-- idea first.
"Songs of Distant Earth", Arthur C. Clarke
-- Shows that his literary style *has* improved over the
-- years. A pleasant mix of the pastoral and hard-SF.
"The Alteration", Kingsley Amis
-- A parody of the alternative history novel, with thinly
-- disguised nods towards Keith Roberts, Phil Dick etc.