Perhaps not so secret, but I was raised on the stuff and so I’ve read far more of it than I might have had I been born into a different environment. This list of Gollancz “classics” is going around, and modulo its omissions and overinclusions due to rights issues and the like, it’s got a fair amount of good stuff on it. And some less good stuff. (It overlaps a great deal with David Pringle’s list, and gives similar overweighting to British writers…which is probably not a bad thing.) But if I’m a fan of any genre (that’s not literary modernism, that is), it would have to be sf. So I figure I should engage in an exercise like this from time to time.
I bold it if I’ve read it. I italicize it if I liked it and still like it today. I could go more deeply into degrees of liking vs. respecting vs. enjoying, but I’ll leave it at this.
I – Dune – Frank Herbert
II – The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin
III – The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
IV – The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester
V – A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
VI – Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clarke
VII – The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
VIII – Ringworld – Larry Niven
IX – The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
X – The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
1 – The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
2 – I Am Legend – Richard Matheson
3 – Cities in Flight – James Blish
4 – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
5 – The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester
6 – Babel-17 – Samuel R. Delany
7 – Lord of Light – Roger Zelazny
8 – The Fifth Head of Cerberus – Gene Wolfe
9 – Gateway – Frederik Pohl
10 – The Rediscovery of Man – Cordwainer Smith
11 – Last and First Men – Olaf Stapledon
12 – Earth Abides – George R. Stewart
13 – Martian Time-Slip – Philip K. Dick
14 – The Demolished Man – Alfred Bester
15 – Stand on Zanzibar – John Brunner
16 – The Dispossessed – Ursula K. Le Guin
17 – The Drowned World – J. G. Ballard
18 – The Sirens of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut
19 – Emphyrio – Jack Vance
20 – A Scanner Darkly – Philip K. Dick
21 – Star Maker – Olaf Stapledon
22 – Behold the Man – Michael Moorcock
23 – The Book of Skulls – Robert Silverberg
24 – The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
25 – Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
26 – Ubik – Philip K. Dick
27 – Timescape – Gregory Benford
28 – More Than Human – Theodore Sturgeon
29 – Man Plus – Frederik Pohl
30 – A Case of Conscience – James Blish
31 – The Centauri Device – M. John Harrison
32 – Dr. Bloodmoney – Philip K. Dick
33 – Non-Stop – Brian Aldiss
34 – The Fountains of Paradise – Arthur C. Clarke
35 – Pavane – Keith Roberts
36 – Now Wait for Last Year – Philip K. Dick
37 – Nova – Samuel R. Delany
38 – The First Men in the Moon – H. G. Wells
39 – The City and the Stars – Arthur C. Clarke
40 – Blood Music – Greg Bear
41 – Jem – Frederik Pohl
42 – Bring the Jubilee – Ward Moore
43 – VALIS – Philip K. Dick
44 – The Lathe of Heaven – Ursula K. Le Guin
45 – The Complete Roderick – John Sladek
46 – Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said – Philip K. Dick
47 – The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells
48 – Grass – Sheri S. Tepper
49 – A Fall of Moondust – Arthur C. Clarke
50 – Eon – Greg Bear
51 – The Shrinking Man – Richard Matheson
52 – The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick
53 – The Dancers at the End of Time – Michael Moorcock
54 – The Space Merchants – Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth
55 – Time Out of Joint – Philip K. Dick
56 – Downward to the Earth – Robert Silverberg
57 – The Simulacra – Philip K. Dick
58 – The Penultimate Truth – Philip K. Dick
59 – Dying Inside – Robert Silverberg
60 – Ringworld – Larry Niven
61 – The Child Garden – Geoff Ryman
62 – Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
63 – A Maze of Death – Philip K. Dick
64 – Tau Zero – Poul Anderson
65 – Rendezvous with Rama – Arthur C. Clarke
66 – Life During Wartime – Lucius Shepard
67 – Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang – Kate Wilhelm
68 – Roadside Picnic – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
69 – Dark Benediction – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
70 – Mockingbird – Walter Tevis
71 – Dune – Frank Herbert
72 – The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
73 – The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
74 – Inverted World – Christopher Priest
75 – Kurt Vonnegut – Cat’s Cradle
76 – H.G. Wells – The Island of Dr. Moreau
77 – Arthur C. Clarke – Childhood’s End
78 – H.G. Wells – The Time Machine
79 – Samuel R. Delany – Dhalgren (July 2010)
80 – Brian Aldiss – Helliconia (August 2010)
81 – H.G. Wells – Food of the Gods (Sept. 2010)
82 – Jack Finney – The Body Snatchers (Oct. 2010)
83 – Joanna Russ – The Female Man (Nov. 2010)
84 – M.J. Engh – Arslan (Dec. 2010)
I’m only torn over Hal Clement, who is brilliant at what he does, but what he does well is not “fiction” per se. Ballard and Gene Wolfe (yes, really!) deserve more entries, probably in lieu of the excess of Dick.
A few more genre authors who really should be on the list: Thomas Disch, Richard McKenna, R.A. Lafferty, Russell Hoban (for Riddley Walker, of course), Stanislaw Lem, Mark Geston, Michael Swanwick, James Tiptree, Carol Emshwiller, Iain Banks, John Crowley, Octavia Butler, Robert Charles Wilson (Spin was the best genre-SF novel I’d read in ages). There are other big names missing, but, offhand, no one comes to mind that I would want to read again.
15 July 2010 at 15:32
riddley walker is excellent. is there anything else by hoban worth reading?
15 July 2010 at 21:07
Since I’ve read shockingly little science-fiction, I’ll definitely be using this list as a guide.
Have you read anything else by the Strugatskys or other Russian science fiction? I’ve slowly amassed a large (unread) stack of it due to my love of Roadside Picnic.
I enjoyed “The Stars My Destination” (do you like any Bester?) but will always regret giving it to my dad to read before realizing it goes completely berserk at the end.
And what’s your favorite PKD?
15 July 2010 at 22:39
a., did you ever read any john varley? i rarely think about the science fiction i read as a teenager but i was surprised that his name wasn’t on this list. (mainly, i’m thinking of ‘steel beach’—i remember liking the ‘gaia’ trilogy but not anything else about it at all.)
26 July 2010 at 02:20
I would say Gibson is a must read, in particular Neuromancer; he opened up an entire genre.
I agree, Spin was quite cool. I keep meaning to pick up the sequel, but haven’t had the chance.
-matt
27 August 2010 at 00:42
gwyneth jones (aleutian trilogy)
mary gentle (the white crow books)
elizabeth hand (is she even scifi? anyway she sure can write)
david r. bunch- moderan (…the best anti-war book ever written…)
lafferty, yes! far too few scifi readers today have even heard of him
also there’s ted chiang–i think he still has further astonishments up his sleeve
m.
PS here’s a secret about hal clement–he writes in aspergerian for aspergers
20 February 2011 at 16:54
Thanks for this list! So many of the authors you mention are favorites of mine as well.
And now there are even more titles that need to be added to my ever-growing “BOOKS TO READ.”
(By the way, I love the fact that your list includes Olaf Stapledon. I especially love the fact that you’ve italicized Last and First Men and Star Maker.)
Omissions that surprised me (listed here in no particular order): Mary Shelley, China Miéville, Karen Tei Yamashita, Greg Egan, Margaret Atwood, Richard (K) Morgan, H.P. Lovecraft, Mary Doria Russell, Neal Stephenson, Isaac Asimov, Alastair Reynolds, David Mitchell, Cathy Park Hong.
29 July 2011 at 17:26
What is a NEW IDEA? An idea is new the first time a person or child encounters it.
So a science fiction book may be great for a 10 and the same book may be lousy for a 30 year old. So how do you evaluate the book? Most discussion of science fiction books do not discuss what ideas are encountered in them. I learned about atheism and agnosticism from science fiction. I attended a Catholic school. No adults mentioned the ideas to me. I decided I was an agnostic at 12.
So do sci-fi books need an age rating and an idea listing. So much modern stuff has no ideas just a collection of tropes that the author thinks are entertaining.