![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
50 greatest SF books...?
It has taken me so long to get around to doing this meme that I have forgotten where I got it. Should have done what ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
banhe did and tackled it straight away. My problem is there are one or two books I can't remember whether or not I have read them. I shall assume I have not. Interesting that of those I have read, and those I have liked, there are only four I would class as
Anyway. This is the (US) Science Fiction Book Club's list of the fifty most significant science fiction/fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002. I am not at all sure that I would agree with this selection, and I shall quietly skip over the fact that they are not all novels and that there are more than fifty books here (the first two are both trilogies!). If I were going to pick, say, an Asimov or two for a list like this, one of them would have to be I, Robot (I know it is a short story collection, not a novel; so is Deathbird Stories). I wouldn't pick Rendezvous With Rama as the most significant of Clarke's novels, let alone of SF in general.
Enough of that. Here is the list. What you do is bold the ones you've read,strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished, and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved. It is safe to assume that several of the ones I have not read are on my
The list:
banhe did and tackled it straight away. My problem is there are one or two books I can't remember whether or not I have read them. I shall assume I have not. Interesting that of those I have read, and those I have liked, there are only four I would class as books I loved, and one of those with some reservations now.
Anyway. This is the (US) Science Fiction Book Club's list of the fifty most significant science fiction/fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002. I am not at all sure that I would agree with this selection, and I shall quietly skip over the fact that they are not all novels and that there are more than fifty books here (the first two are both trilogies!). If I were going to pick, say, an Asimov or two for a list like this, one of them would have to be I, Robot (I know it is a short story collection, not a novel; so is Deathbird Stories). I wouldn't pick Rendezvous With Rama as the most significant of Clarke's novels, let alone of SF in general.
Enough of that. Here is the list. What you do is bold the ones you've read,
to-readlist. Incidentally, although most of the ones I started but did not finish I put down because I did not like them, that is not always the case. Sometimes pressure of work kept me away from a book so long I simply could not got back to it, so it effectively rejoined the
to-readpile. The ones here that I think really fit in that category are The Left Hand of Darkness and The Book of the New Sun.
The list:
- The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
- * The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
- * Dune - Frank Herbert
- Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
- A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin
- Neuromancer - William Gibson
- Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
- The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
- The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
- A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr.
- The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov
- Children of the Atom - Wilmar Shiras
- Cities in Flight - James Blish
- The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
- Dangerous Visions - edited by Harlan Ellison
- Deathbird Stories - Harlan Ellison
- The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester
- Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany
- Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
- Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
-
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever - Stephen R. Donaldson - The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
- Gateway - Frederik Pohl
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling
- * The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
- I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
- Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
- The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
- Little, Big - John Crowley
- Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
- * The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
- Mission of Gravity - Hal Clement
- More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon
- The Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith
- On the Beach - Nevil Shute
- Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
- Ringworld - Larry Niven
- Rogue Moon - Algis Budrys
- The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien
- Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
- Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
- Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner
- The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
- Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein
- Stormbringer - Michael Moorcock
- The Sword of Shannara - Terry Brooks
- Timescape - Gregory Benford
- To Your Scattered Bodies Go - Philip Jose Farmer
no subject
no subject
M
no subject