I saw this list of 100 Science Fiction Books Everyone Should Read and decided to do the “bold it if you’ve read it” thing. (Everyone? Really? Or just all science fiction fans?)
The Postman – David Brin
The Uplift War – David Brin – I’ve read a couple of Brin’s books but not these.
Neuromancer – William Gibson – Just started it so I won’t count it yet.
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire – Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation – Isaac Asimov
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
The Long Tomorrow – Leigh Brackett
Rogue Moon – Algis Budrys
The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clarke – Deserves its place on the list. Really mind-blowing book.
The City and the Stars – Arthur C. Clarke
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Armor – John Steakley
Imperial Stars – E. E. Smith
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
Speaker for the Dead – Orson Scott Card – I read the first four of the “Ender” books. They’re okay but I wouldn’t put them in the “must read” category.
Dune – Frank Herbert – Awesome! I read all three books in the original trilogy and two or three of the later sequels. Those (the later sequels) weren’t worth the time.
The Dosadi Experiment – Frank Herbert – Didn’t care for this one. I actually don’t even remember anything about it but I know I’ve read it because I remember being disappointed.
Journey Beyond Tomorrow – Robert Sheckley
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams – I probably shouldn’t count this one. I know I read some of it, about 30 years ago, but I don’t think I finished it.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
Valis – Philip K. Dick
A Scanner Darkly – Philip K. Dick
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick – I keep thinking I really need to read some PKD but haven’t got around to it yet. Something else always seems more interesting
1984 – George Orwell
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
The Time Machine – H. G. Wells
The Island of Doctor Moreau – H. G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells
A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Alas, Babylon – Pat Frank
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
A Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne
From the Earth to the Moon – Jules Verne
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne
Old Man’s War – John Scalzi
Nova Express – William S. Burroughs
Ringworld – Larry Niven – I liked the concept of the Ringworld better than I liked the story
The Mote in God’s Eye – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Unreasoning Mask – Philip Jose Farmer
To Your Scattered Bodies Go – Philip Jose Farmer – I’ve always wanted to read this one because of the title. I’ll get around to it someday.
Eon – Greg Bear
Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
The Andromeda Strain – Michael Crichton
Lightning – Dean Koontz
The Stainless Steel Rat – Harry Harrison
The Fifth Head of Cerebus – Gene Wolfe
Nightside of the Long Sun – Gene Wolfe
A Princess of Mars – Edgar Rice Burroughs – *UPDATE: Yes, this is the one I read. I wasn’t sure because I couldn’t remember the title. Had to look it up.
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
Doomsday Book – Connie Wills
Beserker – Fred Saberhagen
Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
The Word for World is Forest – Ursula K. LeGuin
The Dispossessed – Ursula K. LeGuin
Babel-17 – Samuel R. Delany
Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany
Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes – Another one that I want to read because I really like the title.
The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
Star King – Jack Vance
The Killing Machine – Jack Vance
Trullion: Alastor 2262 – Jack Vance
Hyperion – Dan Simmons
Starship Troopers – Robert A. Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert A. Heinlein
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein – I’ve tried reading a couple of other Heinlein books but this is the only one I liked
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
More Than Human – Theodore Sturgeon
A Time of Changes – Robert Silverberg
Gateway – Frederick Pohl
Man Plus – Frederick Pohl
The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
The Execution Channel – Ken Macleod
Last and First Men – W. Olaf Stapledon
Slan – A. E. van Vogt
Out of the Silent Planet – C. S. Lewis
They Shall Have Stars – James Blish
Marooned in Realtime – Vernor Vinge
A Fire Upon the Deep – Vernor Vinge – Loved it!
The People Maker – Damon Knight
The Giver – Lois Lowry
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Contact – Carl Sagan
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
Battlefield Earth – L. Ron Hubbard – Started it but didn’t get very far. I might have made more of an effort but the pages started falling out almost immediately and based on the little I’d read I didn’t feel it was worth putting up with loose pages. I have read the first two books in the Mission Earth series. Those were sort of fun and there’s a good chance I’ll eventually read more in that series.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – Mark Twain
Little Brother – Cory Doctorow
Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Jack Finney
Planet of the Apes – Pierre Boulle
I will definitely read more of the books on this list but not all. Everyone who reads science fiction could probably come up with a list of “100 books that everyone must read” and they would all be different. And they would all be right – except for the “must read” part.
July 26th, 2010 - 8:40 am
I’ve read hardly any of those. Do I call myself a science fiction reader? I guess not! And what about the omission of Andre Norton? I won’t argue that every single thing she wrote is top drawer, but, a few of her books IMHO deserve to be called classics. If A Wrinkle In Time gets put on there, then Moon of Three Rings or The Zero Stone surely deserves a place.
The list seems haphazardly chosen anyway. I’m surprised at the choices for the Philip K. Dick part of the list: I would have thought that Man In The High Castle would be on there, as it’s supposed to be one of his best (judged so by no less than Ursula K. Le Guin; who by the way would not have agreed that The Word for World is Forest should be on this list). I haven’t read Man In The High Castle, though I have read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It didn’t exactly make me eager to read anything more of his. I’ve read just about all of Jack Vance though, and I wonder at the inclusion of Trullion . That was a snappy enough story, but it was rather slight. I would have thought Araminta Station deserved a place on a list of Best 100 SciFi Books, but maybe the way that story combined contemporary radical concerns (conservation of a planet’s ecosystem to a fanatical degree) with conservative attitudes (the portrayal of the LPF — the “Life, Peace, and Freedom Party” — that wants to turn the planet of Cadwall over to a population of what are basically illegal immigrants, is definitely a satire on a number of real-life progressive political groups) made the writers of this list too uncomfortable. Trullion is about a planet where the culture is laid back, hippie-ish, and sexually loose; the “villains” (or at least figures of fun) who get their comeuppance are an uptight, prudish cult resembling the Quakers in dress and attitude.
July 26th, 2010 - 5:52 pm
I’ve read about half of those.
And +1 for the suggestion of Araminta Station, which deserves to be no lower than #101.
July 26th, 2010 - 6:19 pm
That’s a pretty weird list, and I suspect the folks who came up with it saw its arbitrariness as a way to generate debate and drive traffic to their site. I mean, really, Battlefield Earth is hardly an “important work of literature, downright excellent, or both.”
(And Lynn, like you, I’m often drawn to some old SF book by an evocative title, even though I’ve learned that the book lives up to the title less than half the time…)
July 26th, 2010 - 7:12 pm
It is a somewhat odd list. Why are some authors listed multiple times, yet other aren’t? And many choices are faulty. I think “The left-hand of darkness” by Le Guin should be on that list. And “Chocky” by John Wyndham is rather better than “The Day of the Triffids”. And the rest of C. S. Lewis’ space trilogy should be there; “Out of the Silent Planet” was written quite some time before the others and is in a considerably less mature style.
I’m in two minds as to whether “Battlefield Earth” should be there. It’s not particularly good and has a lot of basic science flat wrong (so it’s more of a fantasy than sci-fi). OTOH, it is a good example of bad writing.
July 27th, 2010 - 2:01 pm
It’s an odd list.
I’ve read most of them, (for sure all but 12, and maybe a couple of those) but this isn’t the “must read” list I’d come up with.
But then, what criteria for “must”? Innovation, writing style, a lasting quality as “literature” outside the SF ghetto?
The “Doc” Smiths Lensman series, which was probably the epitome of “golden age” space opera, isn’t there, but his lightweight circus novel is.
Asimov’s Foundation series blew the “golden age” soap opera novels out of the water, and deserves it’s place.
Ringworld ushered in the post 1950′s SF style.
But Babel-17 is just a lightweight “concept” novelette. Not bad, but deserving of a place in the top 100?
And so on.
Yeah, I’d agree, maybe the creators of the list were just looking for controversy.
July 29th, 2010 - 9:13 pm
The list was presented originally as the top 100 SF novels in terms of “literary merit”. And well, they’re not.
August 1st, 2010 - 10:51 am
Bookstove, yes.
I suppose it’s the odd mix that sets the spider sense a-tingle.
If it was all l ron Hubbard and twilight knock offs no one would care, but there was enough good stuff to make me look for stuff I might have missed.