15 ms·

The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

• Androsynth 15y ago
  If anyone is interested, here is the list of joint winners of the Hugo and Nebula awards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_joint_winners_of_the_Hugo_and_Nebula_awards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_joint_winners_of_the_Hu... I always find this list tremendously useful when I don't know what to read next.
  • sgoraya 15y ago
    > I always find this list tremendously useful when I don't know what to read next. Likewise - This is how I recently found 'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi; thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.
    • microtherion 15y ago
      I agree. Just finished reading it. An amazing book, and an unusual setting.
  • asymmetric 15y ago
    Another very valuable source of new material for me has been The Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies[1]. Perfect for finding new interesting writers (Bacigalupi was one of the nicest discoveries) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_Best_Science_Fiction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_Best_Science_Fiction
    • krasmark 15y ago
      Dozois has a knack for picking great stories. The saddest part is that it's tricky to get past editions; when I find an old edition I don't have at a used book store it's terribly exciting, especially since the quality has been so consistent over the years.
      • iamscanner 15y ago
        I've had pretty good success picking them up in digital formats - not sure if you prefer the paperback version, but if you're okay reading it on a screen you can get all of them digital.
• j_col 15y ago
  Dune number one, yay! I love all six books.
  • jobu 15y ago
    The first book is definitely one of my favorites, but I can't say I would recommend the rest of the series.
• wccrawford 15y ago
  There were a few 'everything by X' comments that got massive upvotes (Philip K Dick comes to mind) that aren't really represented here. The authors appear, but only 1 or 2 of their works. It's worth keeping in mind that this wasn't just a list of books, but of authors as well.
  • eru 15y ago
    And he wrote lots of good short stories, too.
• schiptsov 15y ago
  Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep is really good book. The movie is also nice, but it is almost independent masterpiece in itself. These dresses of Rachel, these rainy streets. Never mind. Btw, A Scanner Darkly is also good novel by Philip K. Dick, but it never appear in any such ratings. It is almost that dark and depressive as Electric Sheep. ^_^ http://www.amazon.com/Scanner-Darkly-Philip-K-Dick/dp/0679736654 http://www.amazon.com/Scanner-Darkly-Philip-K-Dick/dp/067973... As for Zelazny, A Night In Lonesome October is very nice read. http://www.amazon.com/Night-Lonesome-October-Roger-Zelazny/dp/0380771411 http://www.amazon.com/Night-Lonesome-October-Roger-Zelazny/d...
  • draegtun 15y ago
    PKD has written so many great books its not surprising everyone has their own favourites. I personally prefer Man in the High Castle, Ubik, Time out of joint and Martian time-slip to Electric Sheep and Scanner. I'm surprised none of these managed it onto the list :(
  • icebraining 15y ago
    The most depressing thing about A Scanner Darkly is the author's note about how the novel is mostly auto-biographic, as well as the list of his friends and their punishment. It hit me rather hard at the time. http://www.american-buddha.com/scandark.authornote.htm http://www.american-buddha.com/scandark.authornote.htm
• ilamont 15y ago
  I'm glad to see Gene Wolfe just squeaked onto the list, but IMO the New Sun series ranks up there with Dune. Pohl's "Gateway" and Gibson/Sterling's "The Difference Engine" would have been nice additions, too. Otherwise, it's a nice starting point. There are a few titles I hadn't heard about that I'll be reading, if I can find the time.
  • Jacquass12321 15y ago
    Agreed, I spent the entirety of the list going "Yes, this is a good book, but where's Gene Wolfe?" Anyone who loves literature is doing themselves a disservice by not reading it.
    • colomon 15y ago
      Though I think I prefer Long Sun and Short Sun. :)
  • lobster_johnson 15y ago
    Agreed about Gene Wolfe. Wolfe is also much better (in literary terms) writer than most of the entries in the list, and New Sun ranks much higher than Dune in my opinion.
• dennyabraham 15y ago
  Original thread http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k70dh/whats_the_best_scifi_novel_you_have_ever_read/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k70dh/whats_the_b...
• alimbada 15y ago
  I'm a big fan of Iain Banks since reading Excession (which still remains my favourite). Also loved Dune, but haven't read any of the sequels yet. I'd also recommend Catherine Asaro's saga of the Skolian Empire to anyone that is into physics/maths.
  • davedx 15y ago
    Read the 6 books by Frank Herbert, skip the other spin offs by his son and the other guy - they're terrible in comparison.
    • neutronicus 15y ago
      I never though much of Dune 2-5 either, but I guess I'm in the minority on this one.
      • latch 15y ago
        Personally, I thought Teg was a great character..and the transformation of the Bene Gesserit was welcome. The entire Honored Matre sex thing was just out of place and weird though.
      • jon_dahl 15y ago
        It took me two or three tries, but now I put 2-6 up there with the first book. I think the reason people have trouble with 2-6 is that they're ultimately a reversal or deconstruction of the Hero myth. The first book is a fairly typical "Rise of the Superhuman Hero" tale, and that's why it's accessible. Book 2-6 explore the dark side of this myth, which is why they're unique, somewhat inaccessible, and really interesting.
        • neutronicus 15y ago
          I thought they suffered too much from "scope creep". The scope of the first book was nicely limited, but the later books made the story's consequences so far-reaching I couldn't take them seriously. As regards deconstruction, I think Gene Wolfe does it so much better than Herbert that I don't really consider it a selling point that Herbert tries to do it.
• latch 15y ago
  Dune is great..in fact, the original 6, except maybe God Emperor, are all great. Hyperion is a good book, as is the 2nd in the series The Fall of Hyperion. However, the two last books are really quite bad. Personally, i found Ilium+Olympos to be his best work. I found the Culture novels disappointing. Except for Consider Phlebas and maybe Excession, you quickly realize that they are pretty much gods and that there's absolutely 100% no risk...it makes it all quite dull/pointless. I hated Stranger in a Strange land..maybe I should re-read it. All I remember (and it's been about 10 years)..was that I liked the start, an then it turned really weird...all about drugs and sex and cults.
  • jobu 15y ago
    I read Stranger in a Strange land for a literature course in college, and what really helped my understand the book was when the prof explained some of the political and cultural climate that influenced the book.
  • pragmatic 15y ago
    re Stranger in a Strange land I think it's a book like Catching in the Rye. Our (American) culture has changed so much that modern readers think "what's the big deal with this". The drugs/orgies etc in Stranger in a Strange Land have much less of an impact on a generation that grew up with easy access to hard core drugs and hard core porn.
    • latch 15y ago
      both to you and jobu: That's probably it. I remember watching Deer Hunter...maybe in '99 and I just couldn't believe how bad a movie it was. Obviously, to people still in touch with Vietnam (in 78), the impact was...greater.
      • jwallaceparker 15y ago
        Deer Hunter is an incredibly good movie and I have no connection to Vietnam. I was born in 1977.
      • 15y ago
• martinkallstrom 15y ago
  Missing: Eon by Greg Bear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eon_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eon_(novel)
  • gnaritas 15y ago
    And pretty much everything else he wrote as well; mostly.
  • deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  • Flemlord 15y ago
    Anvil of Stars is my favorite Greg Bear book. It's the sequel to Forge of God which is also a great read: http://www.amazon.com/Anvil-of-Stars-ebook/dp/B003XRERB0 http://www.amazon.com/Anvil-of-Stars-ebook/dp/B003XRERB0
    • FilterJoe 15y ago
      Anvil of Stars also my favorite Greg Bear book. Nobody read my review of this book on Amazon, so perhaps this is a better place for it: I've read hundreds of science fiction books where humans have military conflict with aliens (though not yet the Forge of God). In nearly all of them, there are World-War-II-Naval-like space battles with weapons/ships/shields at near parity. I have always thought this to be highly implausible, and I thought an interesting aspect of this book was to consider three possible battle situations in space: 1) Your ship encounters a ship at a vastly higher tech level. If they detect you before you detect them, you are dead. Period. Your only possibility to win such a battle is to detect them first and destroy them instantly - and your chances of being able to do that are slim. 2) Your ship encounters a ship at a vastly lower tech level. Using the logic above, all that matters is you being able to detect them before they detect you. The technologies of stealth, electronic counter measures, detection, etc. are therefore all extremely vital in order to never be defeated by aliens with a lower tech level. 3) There is a possibility that you encounter an enemy close enough to your own tech level that the battle could last more than a split second. It is only in these instances that all the other things often written in other science fiction stories might matter - amount and type of shielding, weapons systems, quality of personnel, etc. But such battles are very unlikely, because technological progress is so fast. Consider what it would be like for any of today's industrialized nations with a substantial military to combat the most powerful nation on earth from 200 years ago - there would be no contest at all. The universe has been around for billions of years, so the chance of two races encountering each other that are within a few hundred years of each others' technology level is very low. The above logic also applies to planetary defense as well, though with even more emphasis on not being detected. This is the only SF book I've read that envisions future military conflict this way, and for that I give the book 4 stars. In my mind, this clearly deserves a place among the top 10 science fiction books in the military SF genre. However, I did not care for the characters and character development and dialog which occupied the sluggish first half of the book. It wasn't until they started exploring the killers home system that I had trouble putting the book down. I did enjoy the dialog about ethical considerations of what the human ship was going to do, and the aliens they joined forces with were an interesting twist to the story and well done. Bottom Line - the key to this book for me was an exploration of military encounters in space that struck me as vastly more plausible than the typical SF novel. Rewrite the book to remove most of the first half - and it would have been 5 stars for me.
• Rinum 15y ago
  Amongst my favorite SciFi books (not on that list) I loved The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
• templaedhel 15y ago
  I'm sorry not to see Accelerando by Charles Stross (cstross on HN) on the list. One of the best singularity stories I have read, if not the best. For those of you interested, it's available as a free ebook here: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...
  • koko775 15y ago
    I'm surprised that there's only one mention. It is an engaging and very fascinating read which explores some of the fundamental aspects of transhumanism.
  • 127 15y ago
    My problem with Stross is that while he has some absolutely fantastic ideas and world-building, his stories fall short of keeping me interested or entertained. It's like there's so much stuff crammed in that the story part just falls out of the equation. MINOR SPOILERS for Accelerando I thought Accelerando was great up to the part where it stopped making any sense (about the time they were fighting some alien invaders parasites that teleported from somewhere using communication channels). Maybe I'm just dumb, but I really couldn't keep up with the plot and it got very nonsensical so I stopped reading. Dealing with singularities, the divide between the physical and the abstract is always very fluid. While Stross dealt OK with the abstract reality, I thought his physical reality didn't make any sense to me. Hilarious extrapolations, and such.
    • DanBealeC 15y ago
      His newer books (Jennifer Morgue etc) are better stories; with some of the hell of modern office work.
• daralthus 15y ago
  I really miss Stanislaw Lem from this list.
  • eru 15y ago
    Or any other non-English writer.
    • ableal 15y ago
      Really, they could have tossed Pierre "Planet of the Apes" Boulle in there, if they knew the name. Although my favorite Boulle story was "Les Jeux de l'esprit", where scientific rationality takes over the world, and, for entertainment, contests between physical and biological science teams are broadcast. They quickly progress to all out war ...
    • ajuc 15y ago
      Like Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, or Jules Verne. Anyway, who cares, de gustibus something something.
• orenmazor 15y ago
  I don't see anything to argue against here, actually.
• zalthor 15y ago
  I think Speaker for the dead should have made that list. Or at least they should have listed it as Ender's game + Speaker for the dead.
• eru 15y ago
  I'm a bit disappointed to only see English books on there.
  • SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    If you know of any (translated, given my lack of non-English speaking capability) non-English-origin sci-fi, I'd love pointers. I realize a lot is lost in translation, but I love the viewport into other cultures that fiction can provide.
    • jamesbritt 15y ago
      Does Jorge Luis Borges count?
    • j_col 15y ago
      Jules Verne. I'm currently reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and it is fantastic. Originally written in French.
      • icebraining 15y ago
        It's his best work, though, especially of the SF genre (I like Miguel Strogoff, but there's nothing speculative about it).
    • jmmcd 15y ago
      Obvious one is Stanislaw Lem -- The Cyberiad would be my recommendation.
    • joblessjunkie 15y ago
      Stanislaw Lem (Solaris, The Cyberiad) is amazing, and some of the English translations are so full of puns and clever turns of phrase it's hard to believe it was originally written in Polish.
    • qxb 15y ago
      I recommend The Black Mirror, an anthology of German and Austrian science fiction: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Mirror-Other-Stories-Anthology/dp/0819568317 http://www.amazon.com/Black-Mirror-Other-Stories-Anthology/d... Also German, and 50 years old this year (!): the Perry Rhodan series.[0] It was being translated into English but I'm not sure if it still is. The earlier 1960s American English publications were very popular, I believe. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan
• jvdh 15y ago
  The Foundation series was a great read, I read it when I was young and it influenced a lot of how I viewed the world around me. Having just reread it, I must say that it shows that Asimov did not really want to write the last parts of the series (i.e. Prelude to the Foundation and Forward the Foundation). Forward the Foundation especially is just trying to tie everything together by whatever means necessary. That being said, the original first four parts are awesome.
  • colomon 15y ago
    Was just thinking that, no matter how George Lucas messes up Star Wars, it can never compare to the damage done to the original Foundation books by Asimov's ham-fisted tying together of everything.
  • juiceandjuice 15y ago
    I really love the foundation series. Even Foundation's Edge is really good, I think I read that the fastest of the four, although I haven't read the rest of the series. I think the original three are so good because they are much less tainted by actual technology in the real world it seems, and it's sort of funny how Asimov, in some sense, describes Wikipedia and the utter importance of trade and consumption in ruling those around you, weaving in technology and concepts that even today sound like real science fiction; far fetched but attainable in the future. More importantly, Asimov does a good job in connecting you with the characters.
  • jholman 15y ago
    Foundation, the book, was absolutely brilliant. Brilliant concept, brilliant structure to the book, and even the sentence-to-sentence writing is better than Asimov's usual (I normally find the actual wordcrafting to not be Asimov's strong suit). But ugh ugh ugh. Every single book thereafter gets worse and worse, and by the end it's so bad that I actually welcomed the blatant fanservice reappearance of you-know-who.
    • Eliezer 15y ago
      Voldemort vs. the Foundation? Don't go giving me ideas.
• jtbigwoo 15y ago
  I was pleasantly surprised to see two Neal Stephenson books on the list, but why did the second have to be Anathem? I thought Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle were much better books. Anathem's plot seemed like book-nerd wish fulfillment. Of course I still read all thousand pages of Anathem in, like, four days. :)
  • andrewparker 15y ago
    favorite stephenson books in order: 1. snow crash 2. diamond age 3. cryptonomicon 4. zodiac 5. baroque cycle
    • brown9-2 15y ago
      is Anathem kept off your list on purpose ? :)
      • andrewparker 15y ago
        yes because I couldn't finish it so I don't have a comment.
  • whazzmaster 15y ago
    The first 100 pages or so of Anathem seemed like such a chore to get through, mainly because of the tons of exposition required to build the world. It was one of those books, however (Frank Norris' The Octopus being the other for me personally,) that really rewards the reader for taking the time to understand the world that is built. In both cases I read the last few hundred pages straight through to find out how it ended.
  • sid0 15y ago
    Anathem is fundamentally about the philosophy of mathematics. To someone like me who's actually interested in it, it was amazing.
    • mentat 15y ago
      Funny thing, I thought it was fundamentally about the nature of humans' interaction with history. (Though it also made me more interested in math.)
• Qz 15y ago
  A pretty stellar list, except for Altered Carbon which I found cheap and utterly predictable. I'm really not a fan of Revelation Space/Alastair Reynolds, but that's more due to the flaws in the fiction writing, whereas the sci-fi aspect of that book and most of his subsequent books is truly impressive (save for Chasm City).
• chernevik 15y ago
  If you've dismissed any of these based on your reading as a kid, try re-reading. I read Tolkien at 12, loved the wizards and orcs, but as an adult remembered it as nonsense. When I re-read it (to be able to discuss with my 11 year old son), I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Likewise the Dune books (all but the first are probably beyond any adolescent). Good fiction is complex, and readings fascinated with wizards and swords and knife-fights will miss a lot of thought-provoking stuff. Nothing wrong with a good wizard, but don't miss the rest. That said, I'm sorry to say that the Zelazny books, especially the later ones, don't withstand re-reading. And I don't see how "Old Man's War" appeals to any one but a teen or an ideologue. (I share the ideology! but the writing is stale as yesterday's cornflakes, and the characters as unidimensional as Heinlein's laziest pulp, without the Heinlein all-transgressive idiosyncrasy.) Last note: "Starship Troopers" and "Forever War" ought to be read in sequence. I can recall reading Haldeman at 15 and thinking "Hey! He's going after Rico's Roughnecks!" It was my first moment of literature as Great Conversation. And as I read some political philosophy, I could see Haldeman as a Chomsky / Rousseau "it's all socialization!" response to the Locke / Hobbes rationalism of Heinlein. It was an early experience of fiction as thought, and a suggestion of why philosophy alone won't do. Now I gotta go read the stuff on the list that I've missed.
  • gigawatt 15y ago
    I don't get how Old Man's War makes all these best of lists either. It's simple, and not in a good way. It's the literary equivalent of Red Dawn—awesome to 14 year olds, but lacking in anything deeper than "Old man gets new body and has lots of sex."
    • michaelbuckbee 15y ago
      Old Man's War is pulpy fun that manages to also explore some interesting aspects of what it would mean to be able to swap your consciousness into that of a wholly redesigned younger "you".
  • jholman 15y ago
    I must disagree about Zelazny. I find that it handles re-reading quite nicely, except the second Amber series, which didn't take that well to reading even the first time. Lord of Light is especially awesome, and especially awesome on subsequent reads. It's not really SF, of course, but it at least pretends (unlike Amber).
• sp332 15y ago
  I would add Permutation City. It's about: what's it like to be a digital person in a virtual world? What are the psychological effects of knowing that you're virtual; how do you experience time passing; what are the social implications of changing your appearance at whim, etc. And, how do different interpretations of data compete to become "real"? For example, if you look at it one way it's a city, another way it's a collection of data cells to be colonized, etc.
  • jockc 15y ago
    I don't remember enjoying Permutation City that much, but it for sure as hell has stuck in my mind for years (to this day, in fact) for the ideas it brings forth. I think I'm going to reread it.
  • drtse4 15y ago
    Glad to see that this time someone else is recommending this too, full of interesting ideas and overall a good hard sci-fi novel. We need more novels about these themes.
    • sp332 15y ago
      Um, hard sci-fi? Some handwavy "upload person to computer" stuff and then "we'll just rearrange the universe over here, don't mind us". I did read it a long time ago, but I don't remember anything that specific in it.
      • yew 15y ago
        Permutation City is definitely hard sci-fi, albeit less hard than most of Egan's work. Ignoring the "uploading" (it not being the central point of the story, and this not being the place to have that debate), his "dust theory" is very well grounded. That's not to say that I believe it (or that he does, see http://www.gregegan.net/PERMUTATION/FAQ/FAQ.html http://www.gregegan.net/PERMUTATION/FAQ/FAQ.html), but that doesn't automatically qualify it as "magic" either.
      • betageek 15y ago
• pragmatic 15y ago
  I read some of these as a teenager and some more recently. Some really have staying power and some really don't hold up. I found Foundation and Mote in God's Eye rather disappointing.
• joeyh 15y ago
  This kind of list makes me sad, because I've read every book on it (except the classic military SF one).
• pragmatic 15y ago
  Neal Stephenson really matures between Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I read snow crash after some of his later stuff and it's almost hard to believe it's the same author. Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are great books but each has their own style and you would think it was a different author if you didn't know better. That's why I like Stephenson so much. He takes a topic and researches it so much that he brings it to life. Whether he's writing for Wired about expats in South East Asia (which dove tails nicely with Cryptonomicon) or extra dimensional aliens in Anathem, he makes the world come alive and the technology and methodologies clear. He also makes me laugh out loud. Very few books have done that.
  • jseliger 15y ago
    "Neal Stephenson really matures between Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I read snow crash after some of his later stuff and it's almost hard to believe it's the same author." This happens with more writers (and other artists) than many people think. I read Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game and loved both: they're incredibly rich and detailed yet driven by plot; they have the action that a lot of unsophisticated readers crave and content that can still satisfy someone who's read 10,000 novels. Oh, and it made me laugh out loud. U.S. publishers are now releasing his young adult novels. Two so far, two more to come. And they're terrible. Almost unreadable bad. No plot, cardboard characters, wild improbability poorly embedded in a paranormal universe. You can see flashes of his later skill, but his early stuff is lousy. I said this in another comment, but I'll say it again here: I just started reading David W. Galenson's Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity, (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691133808/sr=8-1/qid=1315091347?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691133808/sr=8-1/qid=13150...), which is where Malcolm Gladwell stole / sourced his New Yorker article "Late Bloomers - Why do we equate genius with precocity?" (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_...). Galenson says that there are two basic modes for artists to follow: the experimentalists who try many things over long periods of time and eventually reach fullness, and the "conceptual innovators" whose sudden insight into a field fuels their work, which is often done at a young age. Under your reading, Stephenson would be the "experimentalist."
• gordian 15y ago
  Curious that Roert Silverberg's "Up The Line" did not make this cut. It was the inspiration for Back to the Future and is an entertaining time travel story.
• brainlock 15y ago
  I just finished the Commonwealth Saga + The Void Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton, loved it. Both set in the same universe, the first two in the relatively near future (about 300 years from now), the trilogy in the far future (about 1500 years from now). The trilogy can get a bit abstract, verging on the fantasy genre at times, but in the end the author manages to give an explanation that "makes sense" for everything, which is the thing I really like about his stories. Highly entertaining.
  • shabble 15y ago
    It's a bit of a dubious explanation of The Void, to be honest (although the "Think of it as an 8-dimensional onion" kind of makes up for it), and the ending is a little weak, but overall I enjoyed the series a lot. The alternating of space opera/fantasy chapters is also done pretty well, and keeps things interesting.
• Jun8 15y ago
  This is a really interesting list! You've got the predictable ones, e.g. Snow Crash (man, did the conclusion of that one suck!) and juvenile SF, like Startship Troopers (an example of Heinlein's early phase), but really niche ones toward the end (not many would think Atwood as a SF writer). Two gaping holes: Any SF list that doesn't include Stanislaw Lem (e.g. Cyberiad) is incomplete. Also missing is James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon), who was Le Guin's mentor (read her Love Is The Plan The Plan Is Death, it'll stay with you for weeks.) Also a series I really enjoyed is Chalker's Four Lords of the Diamond Series, very creative.
  • erikpukinskis 15y ago
    How is Atwood not SF? Have you read Oryx and Crake?
    • Jun8 15y ago
      What I was saying is that most people wouldn't consider Atwood as a SF writer, like most of the others on that list. From Wikipedia "Atwood was at one time offended at the suggestion that The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake were science fiction, insisting to The Guardian that they were speculative fiction instead: "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen." Later she retracted from this position, but this shows that her understanding of SF is (or was) quite limited.
  • cellularmitosis 15y ago
    Indeed, I've been enjoying "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" (an anthology of Tiptree's short stories). I'm short on free time lately, so the short story format makes them feel more accessible.
    • Jun8 15y ago
      I loved that anthology and was so intrigued by her Wikipedia page that I bought and read her biography, which is excellent. Would have loved to meet her before she was undone by depression, what a woman!
• cletus 15y ago
  Probably the most surprising thing about this list is that whoever made it didn't insert Amazon affiliate links into it. Anyway, these lists always raise the question of what does "good" mean exactly? Inevitably they're dominated by books that were, in their time, incredibly significant. You see the same things in computing books. Someone will always recommend "Design Patterns" but (IMHO) it is the dullest, driest book you could ever read. The ideas were important. As a book it's terrible. Science fiction falls into a number of categories. The first is space opera. This is basically a tale of adventure in a science fiction environment. Sometimes these books have some kind of message but most of the time they don't. They're typically the "Terminator 2" of books: they can be hugely entertaining, sometimes even really significant, but often don't have much substance. Don't take that as a criticism. Stephen Donaldson's "Gap" series was, for me, a fantastic series but it really is simply space opera style entertainment. The second is what I call "hard science fiction". It's the sort of sci-fi where the story is a backdrop for some physics. Ringworld is an example of this (as are most of Niven's works). This is a genre I thought largely dead (with its height in the 60s and 70s) until I read Alastair Reynolds. His books have more of a story than, say, Niven's but they're still largely rooted in our current understanding of physics. The third is what I call "literary science fiction". Literature, traditionally, was used as a means of talking about something that normally couldn't be talked about. Plays in the Shakespeare's time filled this role. Nowadays it's not so much that talking about these things is verboten, it's that the story can be an accessible way of discussing a topic that an essay never could. Stranger in a Strange Land is very much in this category. It's almost only sci-fi by association. It does have the hallmarks of its age, most notably mental powers (a common zeitgeist in 60s sci-fi). This book probably had the same effect on society that, say, Pacific cultures did on Victorian English society. In the 80s cyberpunk was born. Cyberpunk is largely an expression of fears about an Asian (Japanese more often than not) "takeover" of Western society. It's actually very xenophobic but it does reflect the dystopian fears of the time. Cyberpunk has waned in recent years as the xenophobia has and the realization that this isn't the future. Does this make pioneering books in this field like Neuromancer "good"? Personally I thought that if you ignore the pioneering part, it was a fairly average book. Here again is the power of nostalgia I think (as I read it some years after it came out). So I find many books on this list that are (IMHO) overrated, largely for nostalgic reasons. I also find some authors missing that really should be represented, most notably the prolific CJ Cheeryh whose books Downbelow Station and Cyteen are both noteworthy and stand the test of time. Some books on this list stand the test of time very well. Ender's Game, any of the Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, Hyperion to name a few.
• draegtun 15y ago
  Many moons ago i was recommended to read The Last Starship from Earth by John Boyd with it being referred to has the often overlooked SF classic. It does occasionally squeak onto a list but is still sadly often overlooked :( Also no HG Wells, Verne, Silverberg or Bob Shaw books on the list? Certainly would have War of the Worlds and A Time of Changes on mine.
• acabal 15y ago
  While I thought Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space was just ok, I really loved his standalone book Chasm City. I picked it up randomly at a book exchange and was blown away. The universe is fiercely imaginative and colorful, the dialog is snappy, the characters are flawed and interesting, the science is just hard enough to be vaguely plausible, but on the whole there's enough silliness for the book to not take itself completely seriously. The mysteries are compelling and the plot winds up nicely. I highly recommend it over his other Revelation Space books--it's truly a brilliant, self-contained space opera in every sense of the word. It was the first book of his I read and I haven't since read something so brightly imaginative.
  • r00fus 15y ago
    Chasm City is my favorite book, but not by far... The first book (Revelation Space) set a very nice backdrop for the character development and story in the 2nd book (Chasm City). My only gripe with Chasm City is that there is an (not essential to story) interlude which breaks hard sci-fi canon (ie, superluminal travel).
  • hoodedswan 15y ago
    I enjoyed Chasm City more than the Revelation Space trilogy as well. I suppose plausibility is in the eye of the reader.
• knotty66 15y ago
  Thought I might see 'Flowers for Algernon' on here.
  • microtherion 15y ago
    The problem there is maybe that the novel length treatment of the idea is not quite as amazing as the original short story. One author that I find sadly missing from the list is John Brunner. Each of "Stand on Zanzibar", "The Sheep Look Up", and "Shockwave Rider" would arguably deserve a place on this list.
    • liquidcool 15y ago
      Completely agree on The Shockwave Rider, which I feel is a great precursor to cyberpunk. Extremely prescient book considering it was published in 1975.
• zafka 15y ago
  "Time enough for Love" belongs very close to the top.
• T-hawk 15y ago
  How about more modern science fiction? I loved the Golden Age series by John C. Wright, published around 2004. It's refreshing to read sci-fi where computers and connectivity are ubiquitous, rather than the old masters who didn't foresee the internet. (Stranger has flying taxicabs using magnetic tape for storage, a jarring juxtaposition to the modern reader.) Golden Age raises some real philosophical questions, as good mind-expanding SF should. Suppose you have an adversary in some endeavor, and you have the technology to perfectly simulate your adversary's mind and predict what he will do. Does that simulation have consciousness? Does it have civil rights? What if it's forked? Very interesting stuff, grounded in real science (no FTL travel.)
  • ableal 15y ago
    Thank you. I believe Golden Age is the series I was trying to remember in a conversation a few weeks ago as an example of extreme use of augmented reality. I'll toss in my recent favorite space opera: the Polity series by Neal Asher. Similar to Banks in that it has governing AIs, but less omniscient; good adventure stories, with a dash of horror in original hostile species, sentient and otherwise.
    • radley 15y ago
      I'll 2nd Asher. Just read the prologue of Gridlinked. On par with Game of Thrones.
  • bane 15y ago
    I accidentally happened across the series and couldn't put it down. It explores some of the densest philosophical implications of technology I can recall. Vast arenas, complex growing characters, implications in the concepts that don't hit you for weeks after reading it. I was particularly struck by the concepts that came from the Atkins character, as the sole entity in the universe's military. The magnificent display of unbelievable power, not as planet cracking explosives, but weapons so precise that individual neurons could be severed from orbit, altering the course of entire conflicts. And the idea of the weaponry and strategy, though controlled by godlike machine minds, still needed the ok of a person to do the precision strike. The only real weakness I felt was the Daphne character, she was flat, uninteresting and almost misogynistic in her treatment as an unbelievable ignorant and foolish female character. I found myself aggravated during her sections of the work, this stupid character in the midst of such magnificently crafted, almost baroque, prose and ideas.
• hackermom 15y ago
  I missed Huxley's Brave New World in the list, and I noticed that the list contained only English writers. I wonder why the crowd the list was sourced from hasn't been exposed to writers of other nationalities.
  • rmc 15y ago
    Several of the authors on the list are American (e.g. Orson Scott Card, Asimov, etc.). Or do you mean "english-langauage" only.
• r4vik 15y ago
  So hackernews is having a discussion about a blog post about sci-fi books that were recommended by a reddit discussion?
• subwindow 15y ago
  Obviously with any list there's going to be quite a lot of nits to pick... At any rate, here are mine. Sad to see Stanislaw Lem completely left out in favor of some obviously inferior books (Anathem!?). Also a curious choice for the obligatory Atwood novel. Surprised that Gravity's Rainbow was not on there- I'd put it near the top (maybe it wasn't "Sci-Fi" enough?) Good to see Canticle for Leibowitz as well as a fair amount of Asimov and Dick.
  • zavulon 15y ago
    Hear, hear. Any "Best of Sci-Fi" list that omits Solaris and includes Ender's Game is worthless.
    • starpilot 15y ago
      Any "best sci-fi" list is like a selection of favorite candies. There's fleeting pleasure and some novelty to the experience, but it is what it is and in quantity it's bad for you. If you want to read literature, choose something that will at least make you think better, not just dazzle you with future tech.
    • stralep 15y ago
      I've read Solaris few years ago, and Ender's Game few months ago. I like both books and I do not see a reason for bashing EG. Could you elaborate?
    • jockc 15y ago
      My favorites are The Invincible and Fiasco
    • qjz 15y ago
      The demise of any social website also seems to coincide with the first mention of Ender's Game. Could this be the end of HN as we know it?
      • cynest 15y ago
        I don't think that's a good rule at all. Ender's game a is popular children's novel and is likely remembered fondly in any techie/nerd/geek setting. It just shouldn't belong at the top of a "best of scifi" list.
• dtbx 15y ago
  The first half of "Stranger in a Strange Land" is wonderful, but the second... God in that novel actually exists. For a truly atheist like me, sometimes I want to read a fanfiction of the Stranger, but without god and the religion bullshit. Centered in the economics and the power. In science fiction, the sole purpose of God is to be mocked, criticized or denied.
  • VanL 15y ago
    Do I understand you correctly that you cannot even stand the idea of someone talking positively about God? I am trying to think of another context in which your sentence (In <genre>, the sole purpose of <noun> is to mocked, criticized, or denied.) would make any kind of sense whatsoever. Is there a particular, articulable reason that this is anything more than running away from concepts that challenge your preexisting mindset? For example, I disagree with slavery, but I also disagree that in modern art, the sole purpose of slavery is to be mocked, criticized, or denied. I am a fan of Python and not so much of Java. Nevertheless, I would never agree that in web development, the sole purpose of Java is to be mocked, criticized, or denied. I tend to disagree with the Republican party on a number of issues, but I would never say that in political discourse, the sole purpose of Republicans is to be mocked, criticized, or denied. Finally, I spend all day, every day working against patent trolls. They make me frustrated and angry, and are, in my opinion, the symptoms of a broken system. Yet I seek out people who advocate for the current system so that I can understand it. I can't afford to have the patent literature I read circumscribed so that the sole purpose of patent trolls is to mocked, criticized, or denied. Am I missing the point?
    • dtbx 15y ago
      Just try to imagine something so awful, so harmful to <X>, and your horrible generalisation would make sense :) In particular, what happens when the genre is sci fi and the noun is god? Clearly, that noun is not to be adored. Religion is for that. Should sci fi say something nice about that noun? That He really exists, after all? Science is for that, and science until now... I really think that sci fi should take a clear stance against god.
• jnsquire 15y ago
  I'm really surprised Charles Stross didn't get into the list. One of the best futurists currently writing, IMHO. I also highly recommend M. John Harrison's 'Light' http://www.amazon.com/Light-M-John-Harrison/dp/0553382950 http://www.amazon.com/Light-M-John-Harrison/dp/0553382950.
• _mayo 15y ago
  I'm surprised Slaugher House Five wasn't on the list.
  • shrikant 15y ago
    I think I can understand why it wasn't on the list - but I'd rather not explain the reasoning here for fear of spoilers. (...or has the statute of limitations on this book run out?) FWIW, I loved Slaughterhouse Five, and had nightmares about it.
• ColinWright 15y ago
  Not surprised to see that "Quantum Thief" isn't on the list - it's probably too new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief Highly praised by Charlie Stross (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross), and recommended by me. Be warned, though, bloody hard work - the criticism mentioned in the "Reception" section of the WikiPedia page is accurate. I think it adds to the experience.
• quickpost 15y ago
  The only guide you'll ever need (also courtesy of reddit!): http://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/brm9y/have_you_seen_this_its_a_really_good_guide/c0o8kah http://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/brm9y/have_you_seen_t...
• 0x12 15y ago
  Personal favorite: The Space Merchants, by Pohl & Kornbluth.
• aroberge 15y ago
  While they may be old, and show their age, I would have thought that the Lensmen series, by E.E. Doc Smith would/should have made the list.
• sciurus 15y ago
  Metafilter has a list of lists of the best science fiction books: http://ask.metafilter.com/127327/What-is-the-best-list-of-Science-Fiction-books http://ask.metafilter.com/127327/What-is-the-best-list-of-Sc...
• dlikhten 15y ago
  Some others I'd recommend: Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. Loved it. Flatland. o.O Isacc Asimov short stories collection (specially "Jokester" "The Golden Man" and "The Last Question")
  • silvajoao 15y ago
    The Last Question is perhaps the short story with the most mind-bending finale. Highly recommended. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
    • nazgulnarsil 15y ago
      I prefer the last answer.
      • kilian 15y ago
        I found both to be some of the most rewarding stories I read. With both, upon finishing them, I spent another hour just thinking about it. Highly recommended!
• johnohara 15y ago
  I liked the idea of outfitting Zeb Carter's Ford with a "continua" device in Heinlein's Number of the Beast and programming it so it would move through parallel universes via voice command to the onboard computer. Can't tell you how many times I've sat in traffic and wished I could say "jump deety" and immediately be in the parking lot.
• BillSaysThis 15y ago
  This thread points out the problem with Top 100 lists, of SF or other large bodies of things judged subjectively, which is that there are far too many good ones to stop at 100. In the real world of course one would hope to have the time to read far more than 100 SF novels; fortunately for me I've read several thousand over the past 40 years. Personally, though, I wouldn't put Dune or any Gene Wolfe on my Top 100 SF novels. Could never get past the first pages. Banks, Stross, PFH, MacLeod, Rudy Rucker, Kage Baker, of the recent vintage, would all be there though ;)
  • starwed 15y ago
    It also promotes the utility of such lists -- that they spark discussion! ;)
  • lobster_johnson 15y ago
    > Personally, though, I wouldn't put Dune or any Gene Wolfe on my Top 100 SF novels. Could never get past the first pages. Try Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus and see if you might change your mind. It's very readable, and it's pleasantly short. It's half Borges, half Sturgeon, with a pinch of Ray Bradbury.
• Symmetry 15y ago
  Everybody is going to have their own opinions. For Clarke I would have put The Fountains of Paradise way ahead of Childhood's End, for instance, but to each their own.
• geuis 15y ago
  Out of all the scifi I've read over the years, one really stands out to me. Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler. The reason isn't that I enjoyed it, but rather that by the time I finished it I was inherently disturbed by it. I've often read stories I enjoyed. Sometimes I read some that are boring. But it's very rare to actually finish something that makes you physically uncomfortable most of the way through. The story is excellently written and I recommend anyone willing to experience scifi in a different way to read it. Would also throw in The Windup Girl as another first rate recent novel.
  • YogSothoth 15y ago
    Definitely second the recommendation of Lilith's Brood, I also found it very moving. I bought it based upon the strength of her (much) earlier short story Bloodchild which I found myself thinking about for weeks after I'd read it.
    • geuis 15y ago
      I'm very interested in how the book affected you. When you say you find it moving, can you describe in what ways? For me, the word "moving" means that I was emotionally tied to the character(s). When they succeed, I succeed. When one dies, its heart breaking. But that's not how Lilith's Brood affected me. At some deep level I was very disturbed by the overtones of rape and subjugation by the aliens, but that at the same time these creatures loved the humans they bonded with in the same deep way we feel when we love another person. There was a big amount of alienation in that humans in the bondings were physically repulsed to be near each other even though they were deeply in love. That human beings could only be close via the alien partner, there was just something deeply wrong with that. One of the reasons I respect that novel and can recommend it, but can't love it, is that Octavia Butler did such a magnificent job in telling the story in a way that it makes me feel as I do. That's rare.
• mactitan 15y ago
  Wow, no classics that so far stand the test of time. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (unbelievable at 18 in 1818!) and as others have mentioned Verne, HG Wells(his insight inspired physicist Szilárd's neutron chain reaction). Still an interesting list that shows what the mob is looking at. I guess I'll have to give neuromancer another chance(i only skimmed it) also hated heinland's stranger (the jesus complex was unconvincing). And it's easy to see how a list can be skewed by something like hitchhikers (which is so funny & readable) But in 200 yrs how many from this list?
• ColinDabritz 15y ago
  One omission that may fit this crowd well is "Daemon" and it's sequel "Freedom(tm)" by Daniel Suarez http://thedaemon.com/ http://thedaemon.com/ These books are very well written and billed as a 'techno-thriller'. I think they are also near-term science fiction, and have a lot of very interesting ideas. The books chronicle the rise of a very digital culture and a revolution driven by technology. The technology is amazingly well researched and believable, and the writing is entertaining and fun. At the moment they are quite recent and the technologies aren't there yet, but I wouldn't be at all surprised for some of the technology to fall into that 'oddly prescient' category within the decade.
  • betageek 15y ago
    Love those, probably the only books I've read that deserved the "techno-thriller" label that publishers love. Best extrapolation of the networked society yet.
• gcv 15y ago
  What? No mention of Lois McMaster Bujold and her excellent Vorkosigan series? Bujold won four Hugo awards for her work, just behind Heinlein (who won five), and I'm always surprised that she isn't better known.
  • colomon 15y ago
    No Connie Willis (11 Hugos!) either, and Roger Zelazny represented by the fantasy series Amber rather than the almost universally recognized as superior science fictional Lord of Light? There are a lot of good books on that list, but a lot of strange choices, too.
  • onedognight 15y ago
    Bujold has a noteworthy digital philosophy as well. The entire Vorkosigan series is available online http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/24-CryoburnCD/CryoburnCD/ http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/24-CryoburnCD/CryoburnCD/ ... all of it beautifully unencrypted and unencumbered. What’s the catch? This disk and its contents may be copied and shared, but NOT sold. All commercial rights are reserved. That’s it.
    • starwed 15y ago
      From her novel Barrayar: >"The people’s right to access information shall not be abridged. It’s the first item in the Constitution."
• jwallaceparker 15y ago
  I highly recommend the science fiction of Eric Frank Russell. Especially Wasp (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0575070951/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0575070951/) Russell is a great writer. And funny. The Great Explosion (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/088184991X/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/088184991X/) is another good one.
• hesdeadjim 15y ago
  I have two give two huge thumbs up to a few books on that list: * A Fire Upon the Deep - This book manages to capture both galaxy wide conflict and intense personal narrative in a manner that kept me riveted to the end. That and an extremely unique type of alien life form that gains its personality based upon a telepathic summation of individual consciousness of it's members, made for some really interesting reading. * The Forever War - Take one part Starship Troopers (the book), add a dash of conscription and another of superluminal travel with full time dilation effects, and you end up with this superb novel. I've read it a few times already because it's so damned good and concise.
• mathattack 15y ago
  Thanks for sharing
• sid6376 15y ago
  While I am a voracious reader, I have just started reading sci-fi. (Just finished dune, Starting with stranger in a strange land). Just in case anyone's interested, here's a list of the books mentioned in the article and some famous hackers and entrepreneurs who like the books: Snow Crash - Sergey Brin Dune - Michael Arrington Stranger in a strange land -Michael Arrington ,Linus Torvalds Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy - Michael Arrington Ender's Game- Mark Zuckerberg Anathem - Michael Arrington Source: my hobby site http://vipreads.com http://vipreads.com Links to individual people: http://vipreads.com/sergey-brin http://vipreads.com/sergey-brin http://vipreads.com/linus-torvalds http://vipreads.com/linus-torvalds http://vipreads.com/mark-zuckerberg http://vipreads.com/mark-zuckerberg http://vipreads.com/michael-arrington http://vipreads.com/michael-arrington
• zwilliamson 15y ago
  What about Stephen King's Dark Tower Series? Or is this just best single book?
• smallblacksun 15y ago
  I was disappointed not to see any of the real classics (20000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Time Machine, Journey to the Center of the Earth, etc.) on the list.
• droz 15y ago
  Interesting to compare it against goodread's list: http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/science-fiction http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/science-fiction
• richieb 15y ago
  This must be the runners up list. The best list is mostly Stanislaw Lem with a sprinkling of Philip K. Dick. :)
• zachgalant 15y ago
  I'm working on a website called Raunk that crowdsources rankings of anything (including Science Fiction books) and allows you to view best of lists from different perspectives. It's also a great way to keep track of your favorites and compare them with your friends and the entire internet. Check it out at http://raunk.com http://raunk.com Log in to make your best Science Fiction Books list here: http://raunk.com/create/82,268 http://raunk.com/create/82,268 Or view the list here: http://raunk.com/list/82,268 http://raunk.com/list/82,268 We just launched and are still in Beta, so we'd love to hear any feedback on the site.
• 0003 15y ago
  Not one of Peter Watts' [1] books made it to the list. [1]http://www.rifters.com/crawl/ http://www.rifters.com/crawl/
• bendehghan 15y ago
  Sirens of Titan is on the list hence I feel the list is valid. The relative position might be wrong though...
• wazoox 15y ago
  IMHO Jack Vance should be in the list, be it the Tschai series or some other. Really loved it.
  • hoodedswan 15y ago
    Jack Vance, the forgotten grand master. I love his stuff as well. My choice would be the Cadwal Chronicles trilogy. The problem may be that his signature work, the Dying Earth stories, are generally categorized as fantasy rather than SF.
• jkeesh 15y ago
  if you are looking to easily keep your own list of best science fiction books, check out raunk http://raunk.com/list/82,268 http://raunk.com/list/82,268
• LesleyPervis 15y ago
  Good list, thanks. Weird to make the equation (writers / Margaret Atwood) = (bands / (Celine Dion | Nickelback)). I would make the right side (bands / (Tragically Hip | Rush)). There's nothing light weight about Margaret Atwood.
• nazgulnarsil 15y ago
  Alfred Bester check. Greg Egan check. No Peter Watts, understandable Blindsight is relatively recent and unknown. (Seriously though drop everything and read this now: http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm) No Stanislaw Lem you best be trolling.
• betageek 15y ago
  Someone who never appears on these list but is one of the rising stars in Scif-Fi isis Ted Chiang. He's not written a full length novel yet but his short stories and novellas are mind blowing, best stuff I're read since early Egan. Check out: Stories of Your Life and Others http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Ted-Chiang/dp/1931520720/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1 http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Ted-Chiang/dp/193152...) The Lifecycle of Software Objects* http://www.amazon.com/Lifecycle-Software-Objects-Ted-Chiang/dp/1596063173/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315602763&sr=1-2 http://www.amazon.com/Lifecycle-Software-Objects-Ted-Chiang/... *if there's a more HN title for a novella ever I haven't heard of it!
• buff-a 15y ago
  No Greg Bear??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Music_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Music_(novel)
• discipline 15y ago
  No Dhalgren or Triton, by Samuel R. Delany?
• nazgulnarsil 15y ago
  Steel Beach begins with perhaps the best ad copy I've ever seen. WIN FREE SEX!
• ajuc 15y ago
  I wonder if Jacek Dukaj is known outside of Poland? He writes very philosophical SF.
  • ajuc 15y ago
    Probably he's not, because nobody translates him. What a shame. There are some excerpts translated by fans: http://dukaj.pl/English/ReadingRoom/BlackOceans http://dukaj.pl/English/ReadingRoom/BlackOceans
• dewarrn1 15y ago
  Lots of great suggestions have already been made (I'm particularly intrigued by The Quantum Thief), but I believe that Startide Rising has gone unmentioned so far, and that's a shame. The rest of the Uplift Trilogy is also great fun.
• dbingham 15y ago
  That discussion of Science Fiction heavily disappointed me because it lacked any mention of some books that are full to overflowing of amazing ideas and insights. And well written to boot. The Uplift Trilogy (the first one) by David Brin
• jaredor 15y ago
  Thank you, John Forsythe, for taking the time to do this. This crowd-sourced bestof list is a nice update to David Pringle's "Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels". I love all such lists that have some passion in them, since more often than not I'm introduced to a book and an author that are good reads. Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, fan site https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_pringle_sf.asp https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_pringle_sf.asp Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786704810 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786704810
• angelortega 15y ago
  I miss "The earth abides".
• LadyM 15y ago
  Neil Stephenson wrote "The Diamond Age", an amazing sic-fi book as well. John Twelve Hawks "The Traveler" is also deserving of this list. There are some great books on this list and they truly speak for themselves.
• JenniferMason 15y ago
  I'm a geek, I love Star Wars, Star Trek: TNG, and I love reading science fiction by Asimov and Crichton. But Ender's Game and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are two of the worst books I have ever read. I got about a third through both of them and threw them in the trash. Sorry, but they are truly awful. Ender's Game has a very childish and incredibly boring writing style, as if that was the author's high school attempt at a novel. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has some good writing, I will give him that -- he is a skilled writer. But the humor is so not funny I couldn't bear reading it.
• hoodedswan 15y ago
  I see many comments in support of favorite authors here. I'm gratified to see several for personal favorite CJ Cherryh & 1 for another personal favorite, Jack Vance. So in the interest of variety, I'll state this - Hamilton's Pandora's Star doesn't belong on this list. Read it, enjoyed it, but it's just not all that.
• the_happy 15y ago
  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is out of place. It's a good book for what it is: young adult absurdist comedy. But it honestly never occurred to me to classify it in the same genre as the other books in the list.
• missy 15y ago
  Based on the books I have seen a movie , the key theme is that the charachters resembles perhaps us founders a bit. They feel threatend in their current existance (user issues) and have to venture out into space (Silicion Valley) , into the unknown (the market) to usually defeat something (problems and competition) and in the end become victorious and have peace (some founders). Its Hollywood so in reality many fail.
• geogra4 15y ago
  sort of dissapointed to not see any Stanislaw Lem on there
• IgniteTheSun 15y ago
  An aside that may be of interest: From the linked page: "Ever wonder where the term 'Avatar' came from?" Still amazes me that people think the word Avatar arose out of recent technical advances. One educated in a perspective beyond just the Western should know that its an ancient Sanskrit word. More information: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar * http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/17/bet-you-didnt-know-a.html http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/17/bet-you-didnt-know-a.ht... By the way, both references use the word 'descent', and Wikipedia quotes two western sources claim that 'descent' is more correct than 'incarnation'. I checked with at least two Indian contacts that claim the opposite. [Its a Hindi word also; for those that don't know, Hindi is a derivative language from Sanskrit (just as many Western European languages are derived from Latin).]
• babygenie 15y ago
  Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson should be on there as well! THAT is a book that made me sorry I had finished it. I had lived in it half a year, reading a bit every night before sleeping.
• IMJURGEN 15y ago
  Great list. Only missed four titles. So glad to see "The Stars My Destination" on the list Wish it had included Zelazny's "Lord of Light". No arguments about the rest of it. JURGEN
• IMJURGEN 15y ago
  Great list. Only missed four titles. So glad to see "The Stars My Destination" on the list Wish it had included Zelazny's "Lord of Light". No arguments about the rest of it.
• IMJURGEN 15y ago
  Great list. Only missed four titles. So glad to see "The Stars My Destination" on the list Wish it had included Zelazny's "Lord of Light". No arguments about the rest of it. JURGEN
• lardarz 15y ago
  Good list, and I've read nearly all of them. Getting past the first chapter of Pandoras Star is well worth it - Morninglightmountain is one of the most original, minblowingly awesome all time alien baddies, and the trepidation and sense of impending doom in that book and its's sequel Judas Unchained are superb. Would also recommend the Void Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton too - strong mix of scifi and an alternate fantasy world. Missing in my view would be: Greg Bear - Eon (as people have mentioned, but also: M John Harrison - Light James Blish - Cities in Flight Battlefield Earth (awesome book, hopeless film) Brave New World for my ultimate "classic"
• rmajor 15y ago
  Thanks for the list. Nice to see some old friends on there. My all time favorite is Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I think it is his best. First time I read it I was in the sixth grade. That was 45 years ago. I've read it many times since, and will no doubt read it again.