The best science fiction books | Books | theguardian.com
The best science fiction books
We asked for suggestions of your favourite science fiction books . Here are the results
Thursday 26 May 2011 09.54 BST
Title of book
Roadside Picnic
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
A novel that works on many levels. Literate. Politically subversive. An insight into the human condition.
Charlie Cornelius
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. LeGuin
Not only does the book imagine an alien race, but an alien race without genders. However, this never stops the novel from reaching the high levels of characterization and prose that we expect not only from LeGuin, but from the very best of fiction. By the time the reader leaves the world of Winter, their world will never be the same again.
Trystero
Ubik
Philip K Dick
Philip K Dick is the best author in the genre and this is his best book by a street.
pjlythgoe
Dune
Frank Herbert
The lore and narrative is so well written you could almost believe you were there. Stunning.
The_Hillman
Star Maker
Olaf Stapledon
Lacking both character (aside from the self-effacing ghost who narrates) and incident (unless you count descriptions of the evolution and slow collapse of entire species and civilisations), Star Maker is a Dantean tour of the possibilities of cosmic creation, culminating with an extended encounter and biography of the Creator itself -- the titular Star Maker. One of the most visionary, ambitious and influential explorations of the universe ever committed to paper, Stapledon's novel elevates SF to the level of a sacred text.
purserhallard
Coelestis
Paul Park
Coelestis is not a comfortable read. But it is one of those science fiction novels which can change the way you look at the world. And there are remarkably few of them.
ian_sales
Little, Big
John Crowley
This book is perfect in every respect. The story is rich and satisfying in every detail, the characters are unforgettable, and the language is so good that you want to read every sentence twice. I always keep an extra copy in the house, because when it gets borrowed, it tends never to come back (but that's OK).
Adele
Bug Jack Barron
Norman Spinrad
Experimental, funny and achingly prescient. Set the blueprint for cyberpunk and given all the fuss it kicked up over Arts Council funding, now seems oddly relevant all over again.
DrTum84
StarMaker
Olaf Stapledon
Hard to adequately describe the majesty of this book. Vast breadth and depth. I'd use the phrases 'mind blowing' or 'mind expanding' if they weren't such cliches. Hopefully someone else can do more justice to it in their recommendation, but all I can say is you come away from it with a different perspective on the universe.
AkaSomethingElse
Neverness
David Zindell
I'm amazed that Zindell is not more popular than he is. First, a misconception. This book is described as hard SF - I don't agree. Sure, it deals with complex mathematical concepts, the far-future evolution of humanity...but it does so in a poetic, mythic way. It also covers philospophy, religion...This is a SF Odyssey, it is Homeric in its ambition, and it has quite the most beautiful prose I have ever read in a SF novel. Each chapter seemed to me a novella in its scope and depth when I read it. This is an epic quest of a book.
TokenGesture
The Stainless Steel Rat
Harry Harrison
It is purely fun and wacky. Relatively soft but with hard elements. It gives a glimpse into one of our many possible futures and problems we may face in the future. The characters are nicely fitted into stereotypes and work well together and the stories are outlandish enough to keep interest but they're not too much.
DeGriz
Ubik
Philip K Dick
Classic PKD. Deranged paranoia, mind-bending ideas and lots of humour. This last point is crucial as all the Hollywood adaptations of Dick have lack his wit and irony. Indeed, don't think any film version of Dick has really captured his tone properly.
Laszlo Kovacs
Schismatrix
Bruce Sterling
Gritty, satirical, thrilling, terrifying, mindblowing... I could throw adjectives at this book for the rest of my life and make every one of them stick. Schismatrix not only helped birth what we now think of as the "New Space Opera" (e.g. Iain M Banks, Alastair Reynolds), but was arguably the first novel to imagine a plausible posthuman solar system, riven by ideologies and wild economics, teeming with conflict and graft, and packed with moments of pure sensawunda. Best of all, apart from the handful of short stories set in the same fictional universe, Sterling never felt the need to cash in on the critical success of Schismatrix with sequels; the end result is a novel that still reads as fresh and powerful to this day, more than a quarter of a century after its initial publication.
@PaulGrahamRaven
We
Yevgeny Zamyatin
While not as evidently prescient as Huxley or Orwell, Zamyatin explores a potential extrapolation of the Soviet ideal. Some may call it a reductio ad absurdum but ultimately it highlights the dangers of the worship of technology, the establishment of systems and rules and progress - while it is full of allusions to the early Soviet state, it has a universal message which is certainly interesting - furthermore, its relatively inconclusive ending evades traditional dystopian SF tropes of the revolution or regime change per se.
R042
The Player of Games
Iain M Banks
A very accessible book by which to begin reading Banks, an author whose core franchise/setting appears impenetrable. While its plot can be considered a simple adventure or mystery, Banks' real strength is in realising a genuinely alien futuristic society which at the same time uses elements of the contemporary world, at times exaggerated, in unfamiliar or extreme ways. On a purely superficial level, the detail with which Banks describes the society depicted, and the impossibly complex alien games which form the core of the plot, ignite the imagination in a way only the best SF does.
R042
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Philip K. Dick
'He writes about drugs doesn't he' a lecturer annoyingly once said to me. Well the answer is yes sometimes and particularly in this book albeit some unknown space drug. But like the genre of sci-fi itself Dick uses such concepts as vehicles for what I would see as Dicks’ big idea. Put very simply he recognises that when something or anything is looked at more closely reality and consciousness will change ultimately meaning that both are unstable. In Dicks books this manifests itself firstly in paranoia and then to transcendence. I recognise this as something very human and very real, the cracks in our reality are always there and beckoning us to investigate; it’s why we know the earth to be spherical and not flat. With Dick the journey to transcendence or new forms of understanding can be a very stressful one for his protagonists.
dazdazza
Battle Royale
Koushun Takami
While some might consider this novel a pulp horror twist on Lord of the Flies, it is given a new dimension if read with knowledge of Japanese contemporary history and perceptions of young people. It plays on fears of juvenile delinquency and student violence, which is a common theme across popular culture (youth gangs and violent schools feature prominently, another example being the recent film Confessions) and then mixes it with ideas of how willing anyone is to kill for self defence or self-promotion. A challenging and interesting book best read with some understanding of the culture within which it was written (although the film adaptation is also of high quality).
R042
Foundation
Issac Azimov
The cleverest Sci-Fi book i've ever read. A classicand the reason that Azimov deserves his moniker of the father of Science Fiction.
Simian
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
This book features on every 'Best of' list at some time or other and there's a good reason: it is a hilariously perfect and lovingly absurd journey of a simple human being through the wild riot that is existence. So much of science fiction focuses on heavy subject matter without a drip of humor. Adams wants us to laugh at it all, the pretentiousness and the craziness and never forget our towel.
dijeratic
The Forever War
Joe Haldeman
War as a constant theme, messed up with embryonic sleeps through hyper speed jumps across the universe, to fight in a ship that is now 10 years out of date. Multi-platform emotional relationships and an unknown foe. What's not to like?
wearethedx16
Neuromancer
William Gibson
The aliens will need to know what humanity was like (even if only to recreate us as a digital slave race in their virtual reality matrix), and if any single author grasps the state of our technological society today it is William Gibson. I was 14 when I first read Neuromancer, one of the first generation to grow up hooked in to the computer-generated realities that Gibson so presciently explores. For me and for millions of others who live in the modern reality of computers and the internet, William Gibson's imagined future is closer to the truth of now than any work of realist literature.
Damien G Walter
Vurt
Jeff Noon
If you liked Neiromancer, you'll probably like this. Good cyberpunk vibe to it and some literary pretentions , going with a wellpaced, nicely written, occasionally twisted little book.
lawrencegillies
Argonautica
Apollonius Rhodius
It has survived a damn sight longer than most 'real' scfi novels ever will. And it's a great yarn.
BillyMills
Sentimental Agents of the Volyen Empire
Doris Lessing
It's got everything - essentially it's about Imperialism and Rhetoric, but it has many lessons and much wisdom for those interested in learning about Imperialism, especially the modern-day form of 'Aid' and 'helping the natives' - but then justifications for Imperialism have usually been wrapped up in fluffy-feel-good 'humanitarian' terms
Hu Bris
More Than Human
Theodore Sturgeon
A good SF novel should be, above all things, a good novel. Sturgeon, a great short-story writer, uses the genre to explore what it is to be human, and how we can strive to be more. It is a novel of discovery, but also a novel of compassion and hope. It's also a cracking good read!
Twelvetrees
Perdido Street Station
China Mieville
Despite some dubious plot points Perdido Street Station features one of the most mesmerising and terrifying monsters I've ever come across. Described with a stunning, fluid, dreamlike intensity, in a wonderfully rendered world, the Slake Moths made Perdido Street Station the most memorable sf novel I've read.
mr.riff
The Algebraist
Iain M. Banks
Iain M. Banks novels are great because you have to think quite hard to understand them while you're reading them. I normally read pretty fast, but I have to slow down to read an Iain M. Banks. Which is appropriate for The Algebraist because he created a whole species of creatures, The Dwellers, that are 'slow'. They live for aeons, on gas giants, and little things like having a conversation can go on for centuries for them. When I read this book I thought that was the most wonderful idea, that we can't communicate with some entities because we're simply on a different time scale. The fun of reading Iain M. Banks novels is that somehow he manages to think of these things, that once you've got your head round make perfect sense but you might never have thought of yourself.
JudeNicho
Foundation series (or any book about Robotics)
Isaac Asimov
The Laws of Robotics have been one of the guiding ethical codes of my life - and should be for any good person, I believe. I was very surprised that not a single person mentioned Asimov as their favourite, despite him having such a wide repertoire.
ASMorgan
Lost Dorsai
Gordon R. Dickson
This is a strange little novelette in the middle of Dickson's epic "Dorsai" series. It tells the tale of a pacifist Dorsai who like all Dorsai is in the military, but whose weapon is the bagpipes. Surrounded in a fortress by hordes of clansmen on a Spanish speaking planet, he uses music to insult and infuriate the hordes and sacrifice himself to win the battle. His honour and courage and the creativity of the cultural values described make this story one my favorites of all time.
Mainer7
The forever War
Joe Haldeman
Ridley Scott is working up the film project now. Superb book, though if you have seen Starship Troopers the film it can spoil it a bit.
WIllB42
Its scary, funny and unusually for PKD its got lots of heart
trickydicky
The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester
Gully Foyle is a refreshing bastard of a hero. He's agressive, selfish and mean and deserves everything he gets... only he ends up dishing out just deserts to his enemies anyway. Very cool book (goes a little freaky at the end)
wearethedx16
Chocky
John Wyndham
A beautifully simple idea (a child with an invisible friend) that as the book progresses becomes more intriguing and more dangerous at the same time. Also - it's an easy read that can encourage youngsters to take up SF.
phil west
Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
Brilliant short story about the exploitation of a young gaming genius by the military, published originally in 1977. Unfortunately got expanded into a series of novels, but the original is a chillling political parable, which has gained resonance in the era of child soldiers and xbox
rosaa
Because it grows page by page into an awesom book
Asimov
Us
Evgenij Zamjatin
it's a great book. precursor 0f 1984. not new but still a kick in the stomach
tommasik
Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton
Not only does it have dinosaurs, humour, adventure and a loss of control of the environment in which the protagonists find themselves, but unlike the film version it examines the importance of chaos theory which is what makes it SF for me. Two more choices in no order of priority: Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C Clark The Gates - John Connolly (The LHC opens the gates to hell) for younger readers ( and me!)
milinovak
Still fresh though first published in 1948
PsyBorg
Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami
Murakami is our greatest living writer, and whilst most of his books have flights of fancy that could loosely align them with SF, this is his full-blown masterpiece.
DanHolloway
Stranger In A Strange Land
Robert A. Heinlein
Discovered it when I was 11 or 12, in the adult section of the local public library. It opened me up to the world of "what if" that has remained to this day. I was hooked on Science Fiction since. Mike V. Smith is human, only he was born on Mars, and raised there. That has caused him to think a bit differently, and use more of his brain than the rest of us do. When the full version of the book was finally released, I also bought a copy of it. Using it as a way to look at life, and how we can treat one another, as opposed to how we do responded to daily life, remains fascinating. It does not cease to teach. I have given copies of it away, as gifts, to whomever asks "Why do you like to read that junk, anyway?" Somehow, it seems to answer their questions.
Josh
I, Robot
Isaac Asimov
Asimov's robot stories not only present a coherent, imaginative vision of the future, but also give us an insight into the ways in which he and others during his lifetime thought about and presented the future. Not only that, but he writes excellent prose and the stories he conceived are always clever and illuminate the human condition. I wish very much that he was alive today to see the innovations that are happening now.
fluoronaut
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlin?
It's an SF story that's really all about humanity, including man's inhumanity to man.
Belsane
Anathem
Neal Stephenson
It's really the history of philosophy disguised as SF (but don't let that put you off)
Versace
The all-time classic of SF
Versace
Solaris
Stanislaw Lem
I would recomend this book because it deals with exactly what science fiction means to discuss: the unknown. Lem's best novel is about epistemology, and the our absolute ignorance of what lies beyond the bounds of the earth, and how utterly unprepared we are to encounter it.
bonnequin
Vurt
Jeff Noon
Very very difficult to describe - but it's simply brilliant. It's wildly imaginative, frightening - psychedelic, even. A great, simple story (boy searches for lost sister) set in a future Britain seemingly viewed through early 90s ecstasy-flavoured optimism.
Thatlotnextdoor
Lord of Light
Roger Zelazny
Gods and monsters, budhism v hinduism v christianity in a fight to the finish, the worst pun ever recorded, and a joy in humanity in all of its many aspects and attributes. And yes, it's SF, not fantasy.
mooneym
Dhalgren
Samuel R Delany
I used to re-read this book every couple of years; it's long, confusing at times, but has a wonderful circular narrative that invites further exploration. It's also got a fabulous sense of place (even though the city of Bellona is fictional). Like early McEwan stories, Delany brilliantly captures a sense of urban ennui and although there are elements of hard sci-fi in the book, they are kept in the background, so that the characters are allowed to come through - something quite rare is SF. I also concur with the support for Tiger, Tiger: a thrilling ride.
David Bowman
Flow My Tears The Policeman Said
Philip K Dick
Find it pretty remarkable that such a list would completely omit any of Dick's work. Many of his books are of a high enough standard to be chosen, but 'Flow My Tears The Policeman Said' is one of his best.
 
American Gods
Neil Gaiman
Not really SF, but a world where gods actually exist counts as imaginative fiction to me. A haunting modern mythic saga.
Versace
The Eye of the World
Robert Jordan
The first and best of the epic series which ultimately became too convuluted. Characters innocent and undeveloped, I wish I could read this for the first time again.
earl
Foundation
Isaac Asimov
The book that kicked off the 'Foundation' saga. The dead hand of Hari Seldon and his new science, the mathematics of psycho-history unfold against a backdrop of the whole galaxy. Asimov was just so full of ideas and happily his characters were full and real people I cared about - he was THE giant of Sci-Fi and 'Foundation' one of dozens I could have chosen.
thesistersofmercy
The Songs of Distant Earth
Arthur C Clarke
This novel is heartbreakingly good in it's evocation of the inhuman distances of space & time between worlds. Morally ambiguous love-story combined with grounded, 'realistic' sci-fi - i cannot believe no has turned this into a film yet....
brett78
A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L'Engle
I read it as a child and it has never left me. I believe it leads a young mind to explore "the other" in a different way.
Alexguy
Babel-17
Samuel R. Delaney
Most science fiction, it has been said, is driven by violent conflict; Babel-17 avoids that, having an idea - an untranslatable language - and unpacking it, unfolding out from there. It packs in interesting and human characters, stylish writing, fascinating concepts and ideas, a manic outpouring of intelligent thought, and a great plot, managing to, even now, 45 years after its original publication, be thought-provoking and boundary-pushing.
DanielFranklin
Under The Skin
Michel Faber
Utterly gripping. I love the language and the way the book draws you into an "alien" perspective by the assumption that this perspective is "normal".
KL
Anathem
Neal Stephenson
Much like Jostein Gaarder's 'Sophie's World,' or indeed most of Stephenson's other writing, 'Anathem' is a lesson in science and philosophy wrapped in narrative. In this case, the narrative is sprawling, believable and dramatic, although the middle section feels like a lecture, the purpose of which only becomes apparent towards the end of this weighty novel. The world Stephenson creates is rich and believable, a parallel universe in which science and philosophy are restricted to an odd, codified monastic system - at least until a global crisis places the monks centre stage. Massive, but unmissable.
Wendell Stamps
Foundation
Isaac Asimov
It was one of the first sf novels I read when I was a kid and it blew my mind. The basic idea of taking current trends, creatively extrapolating them into the future and weaving personal as well as social stories from them just stunned me. It got me interested in bridging the divide between maths/physics and the 'ologies'. And my eldest son is called Isaac.
ds
The Gap series
Stephen R Donaldson
The aliens are fascinating but it's all about the characters and getting inside the heads of flawed, damaged, normal human beings!
paganuspaul
Legend
David Gemmell
Not really sci-fi, more fantasy, still a great book to read that gives the world a cracking character - Druss, the Legend of the title. Displays some of the better gamut of human characteristics, without being overly poncy.
tomBstone
Tik Tok
John Sladek
Dark, satirical, laugh out loud funny, ridiculous and scathing. The book follows robot Tik Tok as he realises that he does not have to follow the Asimov laws when he kills a young innocent blind girl just for fun. He soon gets a taste for murder and gets very good at it. Farcical in places with a whole raft of ridiculous characters it draws parallels with the slave trade and the fight for equality. His murderous exploits and cool, calm cunning takes him although way to the top at the White House, his aim: to get his hands on the big war stuff! The novel also takes swipes at celebrity culture, religion, mob mentality and pretty much everything else. It's one of those goto books when a friend asks for a recommendation.
Petecabanna
War of the Worlds
HG Wells
A book that was way ahead of its time, predicting flying machines and total war. Plus it is a great read and adventure story. You believe what you are reading really happended as Martians invide Surrey and London in the late Victorian era. It also created a sub genre of its own the "Alien Invasion" story. A classic novel that stands above all others.
Marky Bunny
Ender's game
Orson Scott Card
Read this, and it's sequels, 20 years ago. Could not put the book down. Finished it in 2 days. Still totally abosrbs me today. Great detailed story about a lonely, little boy. Also fascinating on the military life of Battle School and the Earth's attitude to alien races.
SF Reader
Fall of Hyprion
Dan Simmons
Not just this book but the whole series. Benchmark sci fi novel and whats important is the prose, the ideas expunded in the books and the fact that all my sci fi hating friends read the series on reccomendation and were completely converted.
ddvx220
Amazing book. Incredible vision. Lazurus Long - how I wish to be him!
Everlast
Ringworld
Larry Niven
I was twelve when I read Ringworld, my first adult Science Fiction novel. It sparked a life long love of SF. The central concept of the Ringworld (a constructed habitat that is a ring around a star) is vividly brought to life. The story moves at a pace and the aliens very well imagined - especially the Pearson's Puppeteer. This book is a prime example of why SF will always be a literary form with TV and film being very much the poor relations. I still have that battered second hand copy I read first over thirty years ago and have reread several times since.
Robert Fraser
The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury
Becasue it's a collection of haunting short stories about what would happen when humans got to Mars, each filled with twists, turns and pathos. Like the Martians who defend themselves by changing their appearance to look like humans, to the last human left on the planet after the rest have gone back to Earth. Plus, like all good Sci Fi, it's not really about space, but about humanity.
spleenteam
The Legion of Space
Jack Williamson
As a young boy this book fed my imagination for sci-fi. Having been originally written in the 30s the vivid pictures he paints of far away worlds with bizarre creatures in a swashbuckling story were far ahead of its time. fantastic, something every boy should read!!!
ClayGate
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M Miller
As you say if current human civilization was unexpectedly destroyed, I'd like this to survive as a warning of how it could all happen again.
JohnDear
Golden Witchbreed
Mary Gentle
A distant star: a group of scientists sent to examine its primitive society. An ambassador given permission to roam. The discovery that the society is not really primitive and pre-industrial. The gradual realization that the society is post-atomic and that the re-discovery of machinery and science has been banned post the disaster ... Mary Gentle's book is in itself a voyage of discovery in which the reader starts as a comfortable alien observer and ends as a very uncomfortable but involved critic of a world that wobbles between utopia and dystopia.
ElMu
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
Very handy for hitchhikers and the best read. Introduces millions of people to to British humour and the SF genre every year. Great advert for SF and also very funny.
Marvin
WASP
Eric Frank Russell
A fantastic book that should be read by anyone planning to join the secret service as a subversive officer! It's easy to read, a great story that keeps you hooked. The characters are great and you really root for the hero.
Lawek75
To your scattered bodies go
Philip Jose Farmer
A man wakes up naked to find he has been resurrected along with every other human who ever lived during the history of earth. Their new home is a riverplanet, they are all 25, they don't age, they can't die, and it is all a big social and spiritual project, created by an alien race. This book and the ones that follow are staggering conceptually. They mix history, politics, pyschology, religion, and everyday life in a sublime cocktail. One of the few Sci-Fi books that you read in which that you know you are also a character. For those that go the distance with the whole Riverworld series, the final installment 'Gods of the Riverworld' cranks up the hypothetical social situations to mind boggling levels. Computers that play your whole life back to you, so you can come to terms with your wasted time, evil deeds, poor posture. A super computer that can build rooms a hundred miles wide, and produce anything from human history at request.
peejoco
Dune
Frank Herbert
A cornerstone of the sci-fy genre. Read how Paul Atriedes uncovers the secrets of Arrakis and the Fremen people. Follow Paul's journey into a dangerous world where unlocking the power of the spice melange and it's keepers transforms him into the most powerful being in the galaxy. Set in an epic universe filled with wierd and wonderul creatures, monsters and alien races. A must read for any sci-fy nut.
leto
The Reality Dysfunction
Peter F. Hamilton
Despite not having the easiest of openings (you really have to force yourself to get past the first few pages), this really is a superb opening to a wonderful Sci-Fi trilogy. There are some great ideas, some excellent characters and some wonderful speculation on humanities future, but most of all it's a cracking story, and the main plot sideswipes you from left-field when you get to it as it was (for me, at least) totally unexpected. Cannot recommend this enough
silentbazz
Body of Glass
Marge Piercy
Imaginative, well written. I really like the way the author describes a data world, and interweaves this with a broader narrative, which includes a comparison between the plight of a Jewish community in Prague during the 16th-century and the futuristic community of the future. Splendid stuff
RobNichols
Malazan Book of the Fallen
Steven Erikson
A series of epic sci-fi/fantasy books, the level of detail and development of the history, theology and politics, not to mention flora and fauna of the setting is extraordinary.
ChrisC
The Star My Destination
Alfred Bester
So much SciFi work is seen as being written by people whose only talent was a good imagination. Alfred Bester was one a new age of writers who wrote engaging stories that happened to be along a SciFi theme. In The Stars My Destination, Bester creates one of the most memorable characters in SciFi history. Gully Foyle is reborn on the Nomad, but is alive to revenge only, in a plot which takes us through a world where instantaneous travel with the power of the human mind is possible. His journey to discover who he is can only be compared to the greats of SciFi writing. A definite must read.
SciFi_Reader
Altered Carbon
Richard Morgan
It challenges the concept of self and individuality. It is unremittingly, violently captivating throughout and it introduces the coolest hotel ever imagined.
petesmif
The Diamond Age aka Young Lady's illustrated Primer
Neal Stephenson
Its simply sublime, beautiful written, and would be an epic if it was on screen.
sn0wcr45h
Simply the best portrayal of a cyber and social future.
trdickso
The mote in God's eye
Larry Niven
Wildly imaginative, interesting characters, very funny.
longfields
Gormenghast Triology
Mervyn peake
This fantasy doesn't include any aliens, space ships, or magic, but it's in its' own weird universe. A very Dickensian gothic tale. I agree about William Gibson.
mikedow
Cosmic Banditos
A. C. Weisbecker
The tale is a great romp of the imagination with an insight into some physics. A science based equivalent to philosophy of 'The Truth Gang' by Tibor Fischer, another great read.
Andrew Farrow
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Robert A. Heinlein
It is a completely worked out version of a believable future. It does not require the 'suspension of disbelief' normal to SF. And it is a great adventure story!
lazarus
Now wait for last year
Philip K Dick
Accessible, rip-roaring, thought provoking, good story
oatcake
Very human story of the more-than-humans living amongst us
oatcake
Consider Plebas
Iain M Banks
The enormous scale and technical details of the science fiction element of the story are breath taking whilst the story still holds the reader close to the characters of the core individuals in the story.
Carl Pheasant
Lies Inc
Philip K Dick
As with all Dick's books, it explores his twin fascinations: what is human? What is real? The human side is handled with his usual tender melancholy, while the metaphysical investigations are ramped up and up as the protaganist, teleported to a colony planet where all is not as it seems, dissolves, with the aid of an LSD tipped dart, into a nightmare where reality itself seems to deconstruct.
Quixotic Flux
Tscahi: Planet of adventure
Jack Vance
Wonderful language and weird world building. The protagonist - Adam Reith - a stranded earthman has many adventures, encountering the various inhabitants of Tschai, a much fought over planet. Not quite a picaresque as Reith is too honest but some of his associates are less so. Charming and lovely books and, let us not forget, anyone who can title one of them (vol 2) Servants of the Wankh is worthy of deep respect (even if he didn't know what it means to english ears haha)
Pen or PPG
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Philip K Dick
Do yoursel a favour : read it and see
oatcake
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Philip K Dick
Do yoursel a favour : read it and see,it will open your mind
oatcake
The Player of Games
Iain M Banks
The Player of Games does more than tell an exciting and engaging tale. In the empire of Azad, where the books action takes place, Iain M Banks creates a civilization which reflects the worst excesses of our own, despite its alien nature. Using the empire of Azad themes of one cultures interference in another are explored as the benign, peaceful Culture displays the lengths it will go to push a cruel empire closer to its own philosophy. The Player of Games is an excellent showcase for Iain M Banks powerful imagination. The story revolves around a man playing a board game. Admittedly it's a vast, complex board game central to the lives of those who play it, but it's essentially just a big, complicated chess set. This sounds like rather dull stuff to relate to the reader, but the authors descriptions of the game are never less than completely involving and genuinely exciting.
SoMuchForSubtlety
The futurological congress
Stanislaw Lem
There is a popular misconception that Douglas Adams was responsible for bringing humour into Sci-Fi. But before him there was already the brilliant Stanislaw Lem, whose humour can be often anarchic and deeply satirical. This is a good example of his satirical humour at its most razor sharp. If the idea of Sci-Fi combined with Swiftean satire sounds appealing then this book is definitely for you
vascopereira
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Phil Farmer
Beautifully written; all about hate and love.
mediumcool
Use of Weapons
Iain M. Banks
I'm using UoW as my choice but really any of Banks' culture novels fit the bill. Banks' stands astride 21st century science fiction as a giant. He not only manages to excel in world building, The Culture has to be one of the greatest realised sci-fi universes in print, but also manages something that virtually all other sci-fi authors fail at; the evolution of psychology over time. The inhabitants of Banks' worlds are existentially flawed and carry with them a melancholy created by pitting emotional psychology against the vast backdrop and advanced science they have foisted upon them. The scale of his stories could leave the protagonists dwarfed by the spectacle but they end up dovetailing perfectly into the situations thought up by Banks by allowing us to connect to the madness of existance, whether they're human or alien. Each of his new novels are events in the genre and allow their readers to conduct thought experiments of what it would be like to exist in such a reality (surely the goal of any sci-fi?)
virgopunk
Ringworld
Larry Niven
I read it as a teenager and the sheer scale of the technological achievement of building the Ring has stayed with me - even though I cant remember much of the details of the story today! Totally influenced and encouraged me to pursue my dream of working in the building industry (which I don't regret, even today)
inthetrade
In Viriconium
M John Harrison
Atmospheric blend of fantasy and 1890s decadence, with a consumptive, sexually ambiguous heroine whom I'd love to see Tilda Swinton play!
Silverwhistle
The Dispossessed
U K Le Guin
It realistically sets out an anarchist society from an anthropological background; it's a hard life but it actually works!
billthecat
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galazy
Douglas Adams
It has great humour & pathos in its story. It gives a great insight into human traits through the characters Arthur & Trillian, their interactions with others on their journeys and their interactions with each other. AND it also provides the alien's perspective on humanity! Humour, sadness, love, despair, hope, the ability to muddle on & make the best of a situation, thriving despite adversity; the book has it all & all of it is what makes us human.
The Great Raymondo
1984
George Orwell
Not just the best SF. But best novel Ive ever read. Impossible to explain its importance so briefly. But it is the most important artistic contribution I can think of, of any genre/medium. Art irrelevant? SF escapist pap? Orwell lays it out. It is appropriated by literary fiction like most great SF.
isiah
Anathem
Neal Stephenson
It's a thousand pages of wonder and awe at how mindboggling complex the universe is and the joy and fascination there is in trying to understand it with just the human brain. This is how physics and philosophy should be taught - at the same time and with multi-dimensional spaceships.
hebdencroft
The Gap Cycle
Stephen R Donaldson
An Epic Story, with a dark plot. Donaldson creates a very beleiveable universe. As Soon as I finished the 1st book, I was online ordering the remaining 4 stories
Tonyd71
That Hideous Strength
C.S.Lewis
This is the third book in C.S.Lewis's science fiction trilogy. It combines themes of mythology, allegory and religion with some great characters and moments of true horror. It's a great story that keeps you gripped all the way through.
@nostalgia4books
The Dispossessed
Ursula Le Guin
This book is about the simple acts of kindness that can make immense and profound differences to the future. The main character is Shevik: physicist and great scientist who is nearly close to ending up with a great scientific theory that he knows will change the world forever. He makes a difficult decision to travel to the neighbouring planet of Urras to try and use their expertise to piece it together. The novel weaves around in time: Shevik's present and past are explored: his strength is buoyed by the love he finds from the woman he loves, but also the limitations of living in a real communist world where there aren't enough resources for the people, are both explored. Back on Urras, Shevik begins to realise he is becoming a small pawn in a powerful government's game and has to reconcile himself with the fact that he may never have been able to go home in the first place and may never go home now. At its centre is Shevik: complicated, resilient, brave and fiercely intelligent. It remains one of the best characters I can remember in any book - at the end the final twist of the twin narratives meets into one of the best endings I have read in any book.
 
Fear Nothing
Dean Koontz
It's a different kind of science fiction that allows the reader to be an active creator of the "other timely" world introduced by Koontz. It's not about zombies or aliens or space but it does represent something maybe even more bone-chilling: the answer to the question "what if?"
LittlechurchBee
Nights Dawn Trilogy
Peter F Hamilton
The epic scope of the book, showing the terrifying yet exciting possibilities of the human race as an multi planetary starship faring bunch of brilliently flawed individuals, and organsiations.
Alliya
A really rare find these days as I think it is out of print.
Lemmys Feet
The Player of Games
Iain M Banks
Witty and engaging, it draws parralels with life on earth in a profound and imaginative alien galaxy.
sparkclarke
Last and First Men
Olaf W Stapledon
'Last and First Men' documents mankinds evolution, written by a historian billions of years in the future. First published in 1930, the book documents the many highs and lows of man's struggle for survival. The book contains the first mention of genetic engineering in a sci fi novel, a compelling and truly eye-opening read.
andybagg
Perdido Street Station
China Mieville
So maybe it is the outer fringes of SF where myth and fantasy meets "steam punk" but it does have futuristic dimensions albeit in a retro kinda way. It is the way the characters seem unbelievable yet real which gets me (in all of his books by the way) and sucks me in to a reading time vortex - as all good books should
squidsin
The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury
Bradbury's Mars keeps shifting its identity, becoming a symbol of the dreams and fears of America itself. No attempt is made at scientific accuracy (this Mars is hot, for example), and the stories reflect the Cold War era in which they were written. Bradbury could overwrite, but he keeps this tendency under control here, and the book has a haunting resonance.
FrogC
Excession
Iain M Banks
It has the fastest start I can recollect any book having, The Affront are hilarious and the Culture ships superb. I also appreciate that the nature of the excession is never defined.
Outboundcargo
Red Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson
Hard sci-fi at its best. The attention to detail and depth of knowledge of the author make this a compelling and inspirational book to read.
oneshot
The Sparrow
Mary Doria Russell
This is a strange, compelling and beautifully written story. I'd defy anyone from the most hard-nosed SF aficionado on up not to enjoy reading it.
mccp
Riddley Walker
Russell Hoban
If can get into the language, you'll enter a plausible yet mythical world where you'll get your first knowin from the eyes of a dog and learn the secrets of the master chaynjis.
solomonrobson
Any Culture book
Ian M Banks
Can't believe that none of these magnificent books were chosen. Some better than others, but all full of wonderful prose, deep imagination, gripping stories and interesting characters.
Vex
The Body Snatchers
Jack Finney
One of the few books I've read in one sitting. I also enjoyed The Possessors by John Christopher, which was made into a good TV mini series by the BBC.
Edamame
On Wings Of Song
Thomas M. Disch
Perhaps the masterpiece of a CRIMINALLY underappreciated writer, this novel oscillating between Bildungsroman and Swiftian satire simultaneously celebrates and satirizes the human aspiration to trascendence (through love,sex, religion and above all art) . Set in a wonderfully imagined dystopic America, it's very bleak but also savagely funny, always brilliant, and ultimately heartbreaking.
mg71
More Than Human
Theodore Sturgeon
This book is a positive, hopeful contemplation of mankind's possible next step. How we might evolve into something better than we are now. The first hint of this next evolutionary step is not evidenced by those we conventionally think of as brighter, stronger or more beautiful, but by the supposed freaks and invalids that just might come together in some way to become, collectively, something...more than human.
Fried Egg
The Body Snatchers
Jack Finney
One of the few books I've read in one sitting. I also enjoyed The Possessors by John Christopher, which was made into a good TV mini series by the BBC.
Edamame
Ringworld
Larry Niven
Ringworld is SF on a grand scale in many respects. Set far into the future, it is scientifically well researched and utterly believable, with "alien" characters that are lifelike and convincing: the story is entertaining yet the concept is original and thought-provoking. A fantastic novel, one of many well-written books by Larry Niven.
Simon99
Just because its oneof the greatest sci-fi books ever.
hooner
Ringworld
Larry Niven
The sheer scope of the imagination: the predatory Kzin and the cowardly puppeteer. The gradual unfolding of the driving force of the novel: all the time you are thinking it is the major characters and the incredible world while in reality it is the minor character and her luck. My son and I discussed it for days.
Aetrus
The World of Tiers
Philip Jose Farmer
Farmer is woefully under-rated, and really only known for his Riverworld series, but the World of Tiers is, I think, his masterwork. It contains so much of why I read SF - it has terrific characters, it's overflowing with ideas, it has marvellous set pieces and it engenders a sense of awe and wonder at the possibilities of our universe (or, rather, the multiverse). If I had the money I'd personally bankroll a film of the books, now that we have the technology to do justice to them.
Rotwatcher
The love affair between Lazarus Long and Dora Brandon - but much more.
weejonnie
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Angela Carter
Although not usually classified as Science Fiction, Carter's early novel certainly echoes the themes and styles of the genre. After all, what could be more sci-fi than a plot in which our hero must struggle against a mad scientist, in order to restore a world of order and 'reality'? The surrealist form of the novel and it's passionate portrayal of female sexuality (which is quite unusual for a genre largely dominated by men) makes it, for me, all the more interesting. But, first and foremost, it is Carter's unforgettable language that puts the Infernal Desire Machines.... at the top of my list - vivid and imaginative, she writes like no other.
1246879
Time Enough for Love
Robert Heinlein
A book about an unbelievably old man and the wisdom that he has learned throughout the years. Shows the way we grapple with the big questions. Not without problems, but has incredibly high peaks.
pdefor
The Man Who Fell To Earth
Walter Tevis
The story of an alien who comes to earth to in a quest to save his planet, not ours but is destroyed when he becomes all-too-human. The style is nicely understated, the plot, tech and characters believable and the story is full of gentle ironies. A terrific read.
eggdeng
The City and the City
China Mieville
Hyperion
Dan Simmons
Gripping story,fascinating,immaculately drawn characters living in believable world(s). This book,and it's sequel,"Fall of Hyperion",are masterworks,in my opinion. I was so caught up in these books that they seemed more real than fiction to me,and this feeling holds up with repeated readings.
Chimerine
The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
Neal Stephenson
The story got it all: believable protagonist, imaginative story and a view of the future that in it's premises goes far beyond the stereotypical Cyberpunk setting. Compared to his earlier novel "Snow Crash", Stephenson move further away from "Neuromancer" and into the future. And that's where I like my Sci-Fi: without too many ties to the present day, far enough away so the author can develop his/her ideas uninhibited.
Patrick G.
UBIK
Philip K Dick
To my mind, Dick is the greatest writer of the 20th Century full stop. Never afraid to tackle the big questions, eg what does it mean to be human? Or, as in this case, what exactly is the nature of reality?
Akropolis
Use of Weapons
Iain M Banks
Banks' love of the genre shines out of every word. He has all the usual suspects in the Space Opera toy box, but he shows them to us through the eyes of a spoilt man-child who wants to play with them as much as we do. And finally we get the twist, probably Banks' finest, that makes us immediately turn back to page 1 and read it all again in a completely different context. Genius.
Pete23
Blood Music
Greg Bear
A bonkers, mad book, the story of Dr Frankenstein taken to a grey-goo-fuelled extreme. As the character's life disintegrates under the power of his creation, the narrative expands and fragments. The structure mimics the plot, sliding deliriously out of control until the reader ends up somewhere quite other than where they expected to.
olly1889
Floating Worlds
Cecelia Holland
People need to be reminded of its existence; 'Dune,' 'Left Hand...' and 'Stars My...' seem to be doing okay on this score. Painted with a broader brush than LeGuin's with whose work this one is often compared, it scores through the thought given to its societies and the extraordinary fairness with which it examines the personalities of some truly loathesome characters, particularly the brute like, emotionally retarded Saba and the self loathing vampire beureaucrat Tanuojin, the latter finally emerging as one of the most tragic and pitiable characters in Twentieth Century fiction. From what I've read of her historical fiction, it's also a tragedy that she's not produced more SF, which she would appear to do far better.
Richard Bruce Clay
the man in the high castle
philip k dick
This book has so much soul in it. I return to it constantly as a benchmark of how good a book can be when it presumes it has intelligent and sensitive readers. This book also has one of the most pervasive scents, and evocative moods I have read in sci-fi. It's a joy, and a book I consistently recommend/impose on victims who I presume need further education in the wonder of people reimagining the future of humanity.
poppy
The Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson
Whilst I love the William Gibson's, especially his co-written (with Bruce Sterling) "The Difference Engine", and will always have a soft spot for Philip K. Dick and Ursula le Guin, and happily hoovered up William Harrison's "Rollerball" and Walter Tevis' "The Man Who Fell To Earth" when I was a kid (too young to get into see the films), the book that grabbed me at the time and has stated with me his Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age". I'm not a mad fan of gleaming rocket ships. or distant other worlds. What I do love are either counter-factuals (and here's a nod to Kingsley Amis' "The Alteration" - is that SF?) or off-beam future earths. "The Diamond Age" is a, personally, fascinating look into a oddl retro-future. Not a pill-for-lunch or a personal-jet pack in sight. Lovely.
The Southvillain
The Watch Below
James White
What happens in this book could happen to any of us today. The ending is set far in the future, but the book is reassuring about man's ability to adapt now, today, to a new life anywhere on earth (in this case, at the bottom of the ocean). I found it compeletly believable and beautiful in its detail.
Buntyfox
The Player of Games
Iain M. Banks
The ultimate in political intrigue and dystopian commentary, all wrapped up in Banks' wonderfully realised Culture. Ostensibly about a man invited to play in a tournament of glorified intergalactic Risk, and yet the depth of the social observations, set alongside the super-cool tech, and written with razor-sharp wit, makes it so much more than this. If you only ever read one Iain M. Banks book then it should be this one; and if you ever read this one you'll certainly want to read the rest.
Copper_Green
The Sykaos Papers
E.P. Thompson
Extra terrestrial humanoid lands on earth, is captured and kept in an institute where he develops friendship with one of the doctors. Book is written in the form of journal entries and newspaper articles as we see a naive outsider's look at our culture and how his attitudes and preconceptions change as he is influenced by ours. A mightily written account of an outsider attempting to come to terms with his new surroundings.
StanOnTheRun
the man in the high castle
philip k dick
The best single book by SF's greatest writer.
oldsimon
The Mars trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson
Actually there are three books in the trilogy and they effortlessly combine technology, the spirit of pioneers, rebellion, and political and philosophical issues that arise when mankind invades and irrevocably alters an environment. The whole series is so believable that it drags you in and makes you want to explore the character of each hero and anti-hero as they come in and out of focus as events unfold.
Northumbria
Flatland
Edwin Abbott Abbott
an interesting introduction to the perception of dimensions beloved of physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists. And a satire of the class system too!
commenttnemmoc
Rendez-vous with Rama
Arthur C. Clarke
Just exciting, if counterintuitive, science and a fantastic journey of discovery for the team sent up there to check that mysterious object (Rama) out. This book is too good not to imagine (hope?) that someday this fiction will become reality.
starstuff
Dune
Frank Herbert
Herbert managed to create a genuinely 'alternative' and unique view of the far, far future, a consistent universe which didn't rely on the common tropes of science fiction. Like many of Herbert's books, Dune (and its many, surprisingly good sequels) balance precariously on the edge of pretension - and sometimes fall off, but one of the common themes of science fiction* is about dealing with the biggest questions, and if an author's reach sometimes exceeds their grasp, at least they reached. There's also a great adventure story in there too. I loved it the first time I read it when I was about 12, and loved it the last time I read it, aged 35. * it's just one of them, of course
Fridgebadger
I, Robot
Isaac Azimov
Azimov - the man who invented the word 'robotics'. He also gives us the three laws of robotics. His robot stories are a huge influence on the way modern sci-fi sees artifical intellegence.
GJ Smith
Hothead
Simon Ings
It is a very convincing insight into how the world will be in the near future combined with a grand space opera style plot about danger from outer space
brjcf
An orchestral movement for the space opera genre
anomie
Swan Song
Robert R. McCammon
A typical good versus evil, post-apocalyptic novel. The world finally succumbed to nuclear war. As a result of this final act of paranoid hatred between humans, the ultimate in evil is created. He/It goes up against the ultimate in good, a young girl named Swan, who has the power to give life back to the earth. I found this a well written SF/horror with some really well described characters living in a post-nuclear war world.
tbonetone
Excession
Iain M Banks
It's very hard to choose one particular book from Ian M Banks' Culture series because those I have read have all been outstanding. Excession stands out in my memory because of the intensity of the story and the amazing concepts that fill Bank's universe such as the Culture's Minds and the artificially intelligent space ships.
Tronboy
Plantetary
Warren Ellis
Incorporates everything from tarzan to sherlock holmes to dracula to wonder woman, all within a world in which our understanding of the physical universe, macro and micro alike, get both explained and questioned in equal measures. Truly visionary and splendidly realised.
Thehinger
grerg egan
permutation city
As with all of his first books, Egan pushes his brilliant ideas to the limit of imagination and then pushes them again in mind boggoling areas and then does it again and again. A fantastic ride. The stories are also well constructed and engrossing. The best hard science fiction in my opinion.
tone-wreck
Lord of Light
Roger Zelazny
Because you'll never read anything like it again. It's original, beautifully written, imaginative and highly thoughtful. Really outstanding and the reason I became an SF fan in the first place. Cheers!
AsAboveSoBelow
Old Man's War
John Scalzi
Fresh, exciting, unexpected. A great story with all of the needed ingredients of action, intrigue, suspense and science
rgally
The Algebraist
Iain M. Banks
This is my favourite Iain M Banks book by light years. I love his "Culture" series of novels, but "The Algebraist" story is his most complete. A complex and exciting novel based in 4034 A.D. the story describes the journey of Fassin Taak as he looks for a mathematical transform that may give the location of an ancient and long lost system of wormholes, thus enabling mankind to travel between systems at faster than light speeds. Cruel warlords, invasion forces, friendships lost and remade, beautifully described worlds and a compelling detective story all go to make this book a must read for any science fiction fan.
SBQ
Pavane
Keith Roberts
Although I'd concur with the greatness of Neuromancer, Pavane and its sister novel Kiteworld are an exciting mix of historical and futuristic thinking from a, now, relatively unsung British writer. Perhaps it doesn't have the global ambition of the Gibson novels but it creates a logical coherent vision of an alternative Britain that is very intriguing.
Polymorph
(The meaning and future of human) life, (intelligent life in) the universe, and everything.
etorisky
Shockwave Rider
John Brunner
Before there was Cyberpunk, there was Shockwave Rider. Before there was an internet, there was Shockwave Rider. Back in the 70s, this was the book that told us the direction. When everyone was still going on about space travel, this told us what was really going to change our world. As far as I am concerned, Neuromancer (which i also like) is simply fan fiction for this vision.
Tarnover Number 6
Mars Trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson
The scale and detail of this book are without compare. Realistic enough to keep you grounded yet the descriptions and scope of events are so vast that you're hooked and kept interested through the 3 books.
DurhamA
Rendezvous with Rama
Arthur C. Clarke
This is a very accessible novel that I would recommend to someone who has little experience with the genre. The story is somewhat conventional (beginning, middle, end) but manages to include a considerable amount of discovery and mystery.
xraydon
The Invincible
Stanislaw Lem
If defines what something truly 'alien' is - not some dude with two arms, two legs, one head and a load of prosthetic makeup, but alien.
Orion
The Squares of the City
John Brunner
Read it and find out.
nick-brown
The Lensman books
EE Doc Smith
EE Doc Smith's Lensman series of novels is fantastic. Don't read them out of sequence or you will get confused. Triplanetary First Lensman Galactic Patrol Grey Lensman Second Stage Lensman Children of The Lens Masters Of The Vortex Dragon Lensman Lensman From Rigel Z Lensman
Red Lenin
Nights Dawn trillogy
Peter F Hamilton
Not a classic as such. However a brilliantly formulated and pieced together epic, which is assured to keep you engrossed for a couple of months at least. (depending on how fast you read)
username84
The Player of Games
Iain M Banks
It has everything - Banks' Culture novels all share a great setting, but out of all of them The Player of Games just delivers that bit extra in character, adventure, epic grandeur, and a sophisticated plot that resonates on so many levels.
Kerome
A compelling glance into the future for our technological, alienated, schizoid species.
fformat
Limbo
Bernard Wolfe
If you think that cyberpunk was invented in the 1980s, then you really need to read this book. Combines both a vicious, futuristic war yarn and the bleeding edge of trippy, Burroughs-style SF.
Fat Celt
We can build you
Philip K. Dick
Abraham Lincoln is revived as an android as part of a crazy scheme to re-enact the US Civil War for entertainment only to be hijacked by big business and a darkly disturbed creator - All contribute to this tale in which the author explores his familiar themes of the nature of reality and what makes us truly human.
lonepilgrim
The Foundation Series
Isaac Asimov
Fantastic series of books. Originally just one book - Foundation, which became three books (3,4 & 5) Prelude to Foundation Forward the Foundation Foundation Foundation and Empire Second Foundation Foundation's Edge Foundation and Earth
Red Lenin
Excession
Iain M. Banks
It does what Asimov tried to do but never quite succeeded, despite his many achievements: it has artificial intelligences far more fascinating than the human and other naturally evolved characters, as well as being a space opera to end all space operas and a terrific entertainment. The humans end up being almost the rather indulged and very much patronised pets of the AIs. Speaking of pets, David Brin's Startide Rising deserves a mention. And, for the entire body of his work up to the moment, the great Greg Egan: no one makes you think about and doubt existence, including, first of all, that of your own self, like he does.
Gegenbeispiel
The Fall of Hyperion
Dan Simmons
Better than the first volume, Hyperion, this book has a great, dramatic story, fine characters, plenty of time-twisting and some wonderful ideas about AIs, human evolution, religion and What It All Means. It's not "cool" in the way Neurmancer or The Quantum Thief are, nor is it hard SF like Pushing Ice. It's not gruesome and funny like Iain M Banks (I would nominate all the Culture novels as second choice) but it is epic, thought-provoking and a little bit scary (the Shrike).
thammond65
The Chanur novels
C. J. Cherryh
Few authors can tell a story from the view of a non human character as convincingly as C. J. Cherryh can. Her worlds are well developed and it is fun to read her books. Also recommended reading: her Foreigner books.
Kilminster
Surface Detail
Iain M Banks
Mr Banks' science fiction is always absolutely brilliant. The scope and size of the settings in which the plot is set is so much more than other writers. I enjoy them all, Surface Detail, being the latest developed The Culture concept further, full of dark humour and brain expanding vastness of it all.
stevetyphoon
Consider Phlebas
Ian Banks
Consider Phlebas is sf at it's best. Awesome in it's scope, speculative in it's ideas, plausible and at the same time beyond what we have thought before. Huge things in space, sentient machines, a fantastic society and a main character that is on the wrong side in a conflict makes great reading and hopefully some thinking from the reader.
Morat
Original, thought-provoking and well plotted, not ruined by exposition.
WoollyMindedLiberal
His Masters Voice
Stanislaw Lem
It illustrates the utter futility of projects like SETI - even if we did receive a message from the stars, could we ever agree what it meant. And imagine the religious upheaval it would cause if there was any claim that there is no God.
Orion
Altered Carbon
Richard Morgan
I picked it up by accident from the library and just though, "oh well, I'll read it anyway?" - its mix of cutting edge SF and almost noir-ish story as well as being both brutally gritty and very compelling made me unable to put it down. It's hero, takeshi kovacs is very much a person who just seems to caught up in incredibly volatile and deadly situations, and he comes through them purely cos he's prepared to do whatever is necessary to survive in an outrageously coldblooded manner while still retaining enough depth of character and humanity to be sympathetic. I've read everything that Morgan's written since - several times - and I can't recommend this book highly enough.
MrBardolph
The plot was fucking amaaaazing.
Stevie Wonder
The I Inside
Alan Dean Foster
Well written and plotted - lots of strands - androids, repressed memories, ambiguous aliens, action sequences with sudden unexpected abilities, with in depth character development, and open ended. Would make a great blockbuster film !
ptink
Woman on the edge of time
Marge Piercy
Seventies utopian and dystopian ideas. Aged a bit, but deals with a lot of issues that never occurred to the boys
HappyOldWoman
The Protector
Larry Niven
It's fun. The author has given himself permission to let his imagination wander. We all need to give ourselves permission to let our imagination wander. That's the nub of it.
A Love supreme
Fiasco
Stanislaw Lem
Suppose we do get off this rock and into inter-stellar space (e.g. between the stars). What if we did find an inhabited world, because we were following the signals received by SETI, say. Would we even recognize the aliens as living creatures when we encountered them?
Orion
I, Rimbot
Isaac Assimove
The sheer amount of cock, even for the sci-fi genre, is spafftacular. I watched the film first, which didn't have nearly as much cock. By God, I love the cock in the book.
RickyDawkins
Solomon's Angel
Robin Oram
First it's very funny, the author has a real eye for an unexpected gag. But it's also got a serious side. It's a mix of science fiction and fantasy about a world that is like the real world except that all religions and superstations are true. Four people go on a quest to find the soul of a dead magician that has been trapped on a computer. The characters are warm and believable book is quite thought provoking. It keeps you completely off balance the whole way through. Just when you think you know what is going on something shifts and you find out that nothing is what you thought it was. I like that especially as I realized at the end that one of the main themes is how apparently orderly systems arise out of chaotic situations. I always think it's the sign of a good book that however many times I read it I always find something new to think about and to laugh at.
Mr G
The Gaean Trilogy: Titan, Wizard and Demon
John Varley
Well, it's a trilogy not a single book and, next only to Olaf Stapledon's works, the most satisfying and simply enjoyable SF I have read. What I like about it is that it mixes science fiction with a good old-fashioned adventure story involving likable people. And it is brilliantly conceived and told.
Swami Pete
The Player of games
Iain M banks
A voyage into the science fiction future does not always have to be scientific. Banks excels in his nonchalant creativity, placing his main character, who is world class at his own past time of playing games, into the hands of 'special circumstances' an organisation run by super minds to put right the wrongs of the universe... As an avid reader of what is know as 'the Culture series' I recommend 'Player' as the entry book to Banks's universe, this book, if you like it, will lead to all the others, 5 or 6 at the last count. All different, but fascinating, exciting, sexy and above all optimistic about very advanced humanoid civilization, although the culture is categorically not simply us in the future.
Morat
Old Testament, New Testamnet and Quran
Dog
This trilogy has been the most influential of all science fiction books. Although they are three books, I see them as one long book, broken into three parts because of the nature in which they were purported to be written by a single divine force working through human agents. So even the manner of the writing is surreal and cosmological. They each present a model of creation and a divine/natural order. They are filled with dictates regarding proper conduct. The stories document the twisted behaviors of leaders, wars of conquest, socio-political struggles, and moral themes. Among the chief features is the sado-masochistic relationship that the god in these books has with his people. I found the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter to be exemplary of the kind of brutal gamesmanship between the two parties. Additionally, divine imperatives include the extermination of entire peoples and failures to carry these out to their fullest extent results in punishments. Though often boring and filled with cryptic platitudes, these books are worth reading, if only to look into the psychological space that they have created in billions of fans all over the planet.
Maradonut86
Shadow of the Torturer
Gene Wolfe
This, with its three sequels, is a magnificent work of linguistic and mythic imagination, deeply resonant and rewarding.
The Pondonome
Altered Carbon
Richard Morgan
A brilliant fusion of a noir detective story set in a detailed and believable future world, its pace is relentless and like all good books leaves the reader wishing for more pages to turn.
teddychris
The Fifth Head of Cerberus
Gene Wolfe
Three interwoven novellas. An excellent introduction to the pleasures of reading Gene Wolfe, before tackling The Shadow of the Torturer. Well worth seeking out, since other writers are to Wolfe as ketchup is to bordelaise.
The Pondonome
Foundation
Isaac Azimov
I love the idea of maths as a predictive tool. Also the twist where one character is not what they seem.
chez_25
An early post-apocalyptic novel and an excellent comment on how quickly society can collapse.
Talisen
4 books, in the UK called "The Saga of the Exiles"
Julian May
This series has everything: time travel, magic, beings from folklore, such as elves, ogres, etc, modern technologies, future developments, politics, alien intelligent species, crime, punishment, ethics and morality, all set against a backdrop of reasoning about the nature of life, of religions, of the concept of god(s), the infinite and the cosmos, seasoned with a delightful sense of irony and wit...a series of 7 books altogether, tho i prefer the 4 that make up the Saga of the Exiles...
goddess 2
Foundation
Isaac Asimov
The Foundation series, most epsecially the first book in the series, has a beautiful vision of a galactic empire, doomed by probability to fail, and the preparations for what will replace it. It's stuck with me for years, and I still lend my copy to friends on a regular basis.
danieljh
Out Of The Silent Planet
C.S. Lewis
This book was simply written with a theological angle, however just read literally it was very resonating for three connected ways of seeing things that are indelible to my reading and appreciation of this story: 1. The translation of what the human says and how it is heard by the aliens.2. A human seeing the appearance of two different aliens, before realizing they are actually humans. and 3. Earth is a silent planet in a Universe full of communication.
Affirmative
The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy
Douglas Adams
42, obviously! "It has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover." I states that ; There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. It is quite simply the best book ever written. I grew up on this book, with my dad reading me excerpts for bedtime stories! Sit down with a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster and enjoy! For those not in the know, it's like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
weesuzib
Foundation
Isaac Asimov
I read this when I was in my early 20's when it was instrumental in my becoming a life long Sci-Fi fan. I re-read it in my 50's and enjoyed it just as much. I introduced it to the book club I belong to and they enjoyed it despite the fact that they would not normally read Science Fiction.
PennyP
Day of the Triffids
John Wydnham
Read this a few years ago now and the images it created while reading it have since stuck in my mind. Its a classic because it remains a terrifying novel to date.
mrsbrispie
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
A book that simply defines everything that good sci-fi should be: thought-provoking, relevant whilst retaining a healthy dose of the unknown, perceptive in its understanding of trends in society at the time and in the future and, most importantly, pushing the limitations on human imagination. Brave New World is, ahead of other classics such as 1984, the one sci-fi novel that everyone can recognise in our own cultural infatuation with indulgence and social structure.
PurpleAndroid
2001: A Space Oddysey
Arthur C. Clarke
It is an epic that joins the distant past to the near future. It is hopeful, as expressed in the "Star Child" (I cannot even think about that image without getting major goosebumps) yet it contains a warning to mankind about its own folly. It is at least somewhat prescient in how HAL 9000 is portrayed. And it is a great story as well as a great film. It is exciting and even breathtaking. Furthermore, the film made brilliant use of a classical score with Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra (more goosebumps) and Johann Strauss' The Blue Danube, both electrifying compositions. And everyone thought the apes were real (they were not), while Planet of the Apes merely WISHES it could claim the same.
Tim Anthony
The Fifth Head of Cerberus
Gene Wolfe
The spellbinding quality of Wolfe's prose by itself qualifies this as an all-time SF great, as a book we can all point to when someone accuses SF of not being literature. But there's so much more happening here. Twin alien worlds, decadent, decaying French colonies, and an aboriginal, shapeshifting race that seems to have vanished like a dream. Three narrators, but somewhere in the twists and turns of their narratives, we lose them and find we're holding someone else's hand. I've read this book ten times now and I'm still finding new things to love about it.
Tony Ellis
behold the man
michael moorcock
I read this when I was a young angst ridden sixteen year old and fell in love with it. It's a great little story of going back in a time machine to the days of christ in search of a meaning to life... more fantasy than fiction.
hayden
The Kraken Wakes
John Wyndham
Excellent riff on the alien invasion sub-genre with aliens we never actually meet. Add political and social satire and a mildly unreliable narrator and you've got it made. Foresaw the dangers of the polar cap melting as well!
Sangrail
Feersum endjinn
Ian M Banks
I love the multilayered approach and the phonetic spelling, and then the main protagonist is such a nice kid!
vbigfish
Excession
Iain M Banks
One of the great space operas. Some critics have said it's too complicated. it's not complicated, it's deep. The richest most complete creation in the whole genre. all other SF seems contrite and poorly conceived by comparison.
greattouchforabigman
The Forever War
Joe Haldeman
Comparisons with the contemporary Vietnam War aside, the book was quite simply un-put-down-able! A great story of grunt soldiers training and fighting aliens over a possible misunderstanding with the added concept that the great distances they need to travel to the war zone means the Earth they know goes through changes they could not have foreseen. Classic ending.
Londonclanger
Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham
it's got the lot - it is engrossing, sad, funny, good and bad - it's brilliant and I recommend it to everyone in the World.
fatpaddy100
Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell
This is one of those novels that non sci-fi fans can read without having to think that they are reading a sci-fi story. In other words it is happy to be called 'speculative fiction'. It is funny, witty, insightful, harrowing and shocking and utterly gripping from the start to the finish. This book displays the broad spectrum of humanity from our best to just how low and evil we can stoop. It moves through time from the past to an awesomely realised post apocalyptic future and back again showing a playful and excellent grasps of multiple literary styles along the way. This was the book I gave my girlfriend who is not a fan of sci-fi as the one example of this genre that she agreed she would read, mainly just to keep me quiet. She adored it.
Max von Seibold
Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham
it's got the lot - it is engrossing, sad, funny, good and bad - it's brilliant and I recommend it to everyone in the World.
fatpaddy100
Wild Cards series
George R R Martin
Science based alternative Earth where an alien virus kills 90% of infected and turns 9 of the 10 survivors into deformed jokers and 1 into a super powered ace. Aliens, an outbreak, superheroes/villains, adult storylines and a mirror of history either accurate or changed for their purposes. 22 years and 21 books later you can't fail but to read and be consumed by the detailed world Martin and his co-writers have created.
Halo572
The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
Well written, extremely good plotting and characterisation, and has elements which stay with you for years after reading it (which is the whole point, isn't it?)
icklewickle
Starship Troopers
Robert A.Heinlen
A novel which focuses on how a military-run government would look. Also gives a good description of uber-cool space suits and fighting aliens
Thejackyyy
Really makes you think about how OUR world works by looking at another.
Pc83103
Look to Windward
Iain M. Banks
Am almost completely realised universe, very smart and incisive. I found the contrast between the connections of the culture through neural laces and the inhabitants of Yoleus to be very thought provoking, as it brought up a host of questions about the causes and effects of instant information through the internet. Also damned funny.
apriori
The Chrysalids
John Wyndham
I first read this book as a pre teen and found it an atypical examination of prejudice and the fear that inspires it. It is however, a very enjoyable, well written read. I have read it in every subsequent decade of my life and found no less enjoyable. I would recomend it for young and old alike. By far my favorite John Wyndham book.
Petra
All books of the Robotic series together with the Foundation Series
ISAAC ASIMOV
The Iron Dream
Norman Spinrad
Alternate history squared, Spinrad posits a world where Hitler went to the US in the late 1920s and became a science fiction writer of the golden age. His greatest story, Lord of the Swastika, is the novel within the novel, and it’s a retelling of the Third Reich in an SF setting. It’s all there, the mythical ideology, militarism, master race, subhumans, genocide, only the Nazis are the good guys. A spoiler proof story and not actually a very good one, but the shock is realizing how close so much SF comes to it. They’re fascistic power fantasies with impossibly virtuous male heroes, pure black villains deserving extermination, end-to-end violence, women completely written out, etc. Spinrad includes an academic article criticizing HItler on a literary basis to help you process the experience. Everyone should read this before Ender’s Game.
John Lawless
All books of the Robotic series together with the Foundation Series
ISAAC ASIMOV
tHEY ARE A fantastic TOUR DE FORCE IN SF LITERATURE.
Noronha.
It has everything, hard Sci-Fi ideas, fantasy politics, religion, philosophy, romance...
Bob
Excession
Iain M Banks
Sprawling SF on a vast scale, violent and hilarious in equal measure, Banks' Culture Novels are peerless, and this is one of his best.
The Pope
citizen of the ga;laxy
robert heinlein
Even non-sf fans like this. Classic story of the slave from nowhere, uneducated & ignorent, who through luck & his own pluck, is educated, becomes moral, regains his own true position and dedicates his life to ending slavery! Heinlein probably created more libertarians with this book than Hyeck!
americanlibrarylady
Only Forward
Michael Marshall Smith
The first of Smiths books and the first one I had read, picked up at random from a newsagents. It could be argued that this is SF/Horror but for me it is firmly in the SF category. I was in my early/mid teens and it was one of those books that change your way of thinking. From the first page you are hooked by the vivid imagery and shocking storyline. It was a lesson in how you can put wild imagination onto the page and let it run away with itself.
Sizzler
Matter
Iain M Banks
Despite it's complex concepts the vivid imagery and flowing dialogue reall lets you enter the Culture world for the first time with a great understanidng for me the best Sci fi book ever written.
Schmicko
Best of the 'culture' novels. Games at multiple levels, very black and very entertaining.
thurdman
Rendevous with Rama
Arthur C Clarke
There was just something about this book and all the thought that author Clarke put into it that made it stand out for me. There was no wild imaginings just simple and logical prediction. The only thing that was a little hard to believe was the physical size of Rama. Given the cost and complexity of building the ISS, one has to wonder how long and how much it took to be built and sent on it's way. A super read though.
Joolsaitch
The Mythidria CHronicles: RIse of the Nightmare
William H. Cash
Bill is a pal of mine for starters. He was working on this book years before I met him. He let me read his rough draft when it was done and after that, I hope he will write more. I've downloaded his ebook and it's even better finished. He said that it's the kind of story he wantes to read about. He's shared it with some other people I work with and everybody loves it. I think he had his brother make a video, but I'm not sure. He was talking about it. Bill can draw, too. I'm friends with him on facebook, and his characters are really cool so now you can actually see what his characters look like as he sees them. I would recommend this book even if Bill wasn't my friend, it's that good.
surlyoldcat@q.com
Dune
Frank Herbert
I thought it was too obvious, but apparently not, based upon the comments below. Dune, along with Stranger in a Strange Land, catapulted sci fi out of the "golden age", and re-defined the genre. These two books are to sci-fi what the Beatles were to rock. Everything after was different.
Jeff T. Boston USA
Body of Glass (He/She and It)
Marge Piercy
This novel is set in a post environmental holocaust future with both a dystopia and a Utopia. It presents beautifully drawn characters in a technological wonderland with a hellishly corporate backdrop. The novel revolves around Shira and her quest to be reunited with her son - taken from her by the company she used to work for. In her quest she is joined by a wonderful cyborg named Yod and the novel tells of their relationship and brings into question what it is to be human. The story is interspersed with the tale of the Golem in Prague which brings the questions around what is life into a longer history and gives it weight. As a science fiction novel it is so frighteningly possible - and in the not very distant future - but its real power is that we can already see how close we are to becoming a world in which corporations control private lives. There's some really wonderful moments like when Shira and co hack into the company's computer system using their minds, but flying in the shapes of birds, and when Shira is trying to teach Yod to understand the beauty of roses. I don't want to give anything else away as there are also unseen twists. Plus there are kittens!
rosemaryhell
Light
M John Harrison
weirdly it was a book i didn't like for its first three quarters. Too dense, too pretentious, no likable characters and then for the last quarter...boom, it all made sense, kind of. Suddenly transformed to profound, disturbing, beautiful and lyrical. As someone else on this thread says, "Quite unlike anything else i've read".
thevurt
Diaspora
Greg Egan
Start with the creation of a mind then follow it on a post-human diaspora through the multiverse.
rkmspence
Brain Wave
Poul Anderson
Over 2 generations ahead of its time - Still a contemporary science fiction novel of the highest quality - the central tenet still stands the ravages of time as a truly inspiring and though provoking possibility. An amazing gem.
sethndavid
Slaughterhouse 5
Kurt Vonnegut
Not sure if it's SF, biography, satire, or a combination of all these and more, but it's a genius little book which I read over 20 years ago for the first time; I re-read it ocassionally, and it's still fresh to me.
The Kernel
Uplift Trilogy
David Brind
An amazing series detailing the interactions between a number of species includinfg humans on a grandiose scale. A must read for any true lover of SF
HALTAN
Diaspora
Greg Egan
When the author tries to explain what a twelve dimensional planet might look like in an alternative universe it boggles my poor little four dimensional mind, but in that giddy, vertigionous way Stephen Hawking sometimes managed in a Brief History of Time. Except theres no spaceships, aliens, virtual realities in Hawkings book, which makes this book quite a lot better. Diapsora is a novel of big ideas. From the birth of a (gender neutral) new mind in a virtual reality where most of humanity live in the near future (2795 AD) to exploration of the galaxy and on to other universes of increasing multidimensional complexity to the ultimate fate of our species and others, all in a pursuit of a mystery - how does the universe (hmm, multiverse really) work? How can we survive its indifferent violence? And where are the mysterious species who left microscopic clues behind in the structure of an alien planet warning of galaxy wide catastrophe? As the book progresses the relative importance of these questions and answers change. What happens when the answers are complete? Are they ever? It does take a while to get going particularly if you're not familiar with 'hard sci-fi' but there are no 'cheats' used in traditional sci fi. No transporters, FTL travel and the intelligent aliens are so utterly unlike the 'human' heroes they need several layers of 'relay-team' interpreters even to communicate. I look forward to the day mind wipes become more widely available so I can read it again for the first time.
Gunboat Diplomat
Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
Like the best science fiction, it portrayed a plausible world growing out of our present - and the central figure is a believable human being doing currently-unbelievable things who grows, over the course of the book. And totally gratuitously, it led to a number of sequels as rich and believable, in their way, as the first in the series was itself.
fojo
World of Ptavvs
Larry Niven
Larry Niven is mainly know for his Ringworld series books. Generally his books are set in "known space" - a universe not too distant in the future - or close parallels to this creation. In "World of Ptavvs", Larry brings an alien known in "known space" as being extinct for millions of years to the present day. The alien (a Slaver) had been in stasis and is unintentionally released and then sets about trying to enslave the earth. Fortunately Larry Greenberg, who had been trying to reach the alien telepathically whilst in stasis, is here to save the day. Without giving too much away, humans are related to the Slaver race, meaning of course that the World of the Ptavvs is earth. Some Slavers that have lost all their family (rather than committing suicide) will decide to protect the whole Slaver species. If only Larry knew someone like that to protect earth from this Slaver.... What I like about the book is that the complete story spans from years into past and future. Space Opera it is not as the books are far too easy to read (a couple hours to read this book) but none-the-less Larry Niven creates a rich and compelling universe.
smicken
Well written, wll thought out, great plot develpoment, and all around awesome!!!!
 
Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula Laguinn
This book so beautifully demonstrates the point that what falls between two opposing, hard-held points of view is truth
gail robinson
High Rise
JG Ballard
Not science fiction by the contemporary definition. This novel deals with what has been coined "inner space" rather than the more outer-space oriented, Le Guinesque fantasies. JG Ballard was a prominent figure of the new wave of science fiction: a collective of novelists who emerged in the 1960s and were mostly concerned with the birth of the space age and the atom bomb, for example. This was a time when events of the so-called real world began to seem stranger than fiction. As a result, novelists of this era began to write about dystopian near-futures rather than settings vastly remote in time and distance. . . High Rise deals with the effects of the man-made, physical landscape, in this case an east London aparment block - on the physcology of the tenants. The rigidly defined social structure, too-easy access to amenities and desire of the tenants to resign from their lives as mindless functionaries, sets in motion a descent into a microcosmic catastrophe. Ballard's ruthless imagination is on show here in all its glory. This book changed my life.
Dick Smith
Valis
Philip k. Dick
Strictly not Sci-Fi, but a theological meditation on perception, sanity and counterculture. One of my favourite books, up there with Camus and Satre in my opinion. The protaginist is a man undergoing a nervous breakdown who interprets his psychosis as religious revelations. Astoundingly well-written, profound and funny. Refutes the view of science fiction as 'Cowboys and Indians in Space.'
FabianRothschilde
Mission Earth
L Ron Hubbard
The author is a bit of a nutter, but the Mission Earth books are an excellent read. And, the hero grows up a little
District9
The Iron Dream
Norman Spinrad
Eurasia (including Britain) has been conquered by Bolshevism. Only the Empire of Japan and its valiant ally the Bushido-spouting USA stand fast against the Stalinist hordes. All because Adolf Hitler emigrated to New York in 1924 to become a science-fiction writer. That's the framing story. The bulk of Spinrad's novel Iron Dream is actually a novel-within-a-novel called Lord Of The Swastika written by, wait for it, Adolf Hitler sometime in the 1950s. LOTS won the Hugo award and established Hitler as a preeminent voice on the American pulp scene. LOTS tells of a mythologized Germany ("Heldon")in a future post-nuclear world that rose up to defeat the evil mutant forces of Zind and their humanity-destroying rulers the Dominators.
notathome
Dune
Hebert
Dune is a brilliant story from beginning to end that is pure prophecy when viewed post 9/11. The only reason it's not more popular is because it's too real in many respects. It lacks that warm and fuzzy Hollywood-like ending needed for today's pop culture. Still, it's a brilliant series of books. I recommend them all.
Michael Boh, LA, USA
Shikasta
Doris Lessing
Like all great science fiction Shikasta and its four companion volumes has a serious philosphical core; It is beautifully written, and is a cracking read.It is plausible and utopic, offering a glimpse of a future of equality and sexual freedom with humankind and nature in balance, while pointing at the frailties of current reality and pertinently criticising organised religion, ideology, and colonialism. Lessing's imagination runs riot, and the fourth volume, although slim, has one of the finest takes on survival in a hostile environment I have ever read. Inspiring.
thegoodterrorist
The Chronicles of Amber
Roger Zelazny
One of the most compelling (compendium of five) book(s). Fast paced, excellently written and many thought provoking ideas playing merry hell with history, time, space and logic. Not to mention a great cliffhanger ending
RonJB
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE
PHILIP K . DICK
A WELL DETAİLED wHAT İF NOVEL
ERDEM
The Sentinel
Arthur C Clarke
This is not a book, it is a short story, a very short story, but it was the inspiration for Clarke And Kubrick's collaborative epic 2001. It sums up humanities constant desire to discover 'someone else, out there. We are so lonely, like a kid who has lost it's mom. So much SF is devoted to our quest for contact, but the original short sums up the anticipation so well.
 
We Can Remember it For you Wholesale
Philip K Dick
This collection of short stories is full of wit humour and dystopian futures. Book bindings that rewrite books, aliens infiltrating society as four foot high VW mechanics and faulty time travellers taking part in their own autopsy and ticker tape parade. This book is the most imaginative i have ever read and i'm overwhelmed by its brilliance whenever I read it. I have laughed, cried (almost) and felt almost every emotion in between and if one person reads it because of me i shall be happy.
nofx
1984
George Orwell
ALTHOUGH THE MEDIA IN THE YEAR 1984 WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE THAT THE WORLD ENVISIONED BY ORWELL WASN'T AT ALL LIKE THAT WE ARE NOW EXPERIENCING. IT SURE WAS AND IS TO THIS DAY ! NEW SPEAK ANYONE ?
mauriceeric
We Can Remember it For you Wholesale
Philip K Dick
This collection of short stories is full of wit humour and dystopian futures. Book bindings that rewrite books, aliens infiltrating society as four foot high VW mechanics and faulty time travellers taking part in their own autopsy and ticker tape parade. This book is the most imaginative i have ever read and i'm overwhelmed by its brilliance whenever I read it. I have laughed, cried (almost) and felt almost every emotion in between and if one person reads it because of me i shall be happy.
nofx
 
 
I'd just like to put in a moan about the way bookshops display Sci-Fi - they integrate it into Fantasy. I've nothing against fairies, elves and goblins, but this genre tends to look backwards to times when knights were armed and everyone else was nervous. Sci-fi generally looks forward to the future with technology or societies or takes alternative universes and extrapolates. So why do bookshops display them together? Do they have no concept of either genre? Moan of the day over.
Janeira
Neuromancer
William Gibson
Prophetic. Serves up visual imagery of technological advances that we have now attained or on the way to achieving. Corporate pervasiveness in holographic advertising projected anywhere, futuristic ways of engaging with celebrity idols, cosmetic surgery making people look like an amalgamation of famous stars, old technology lying around in scrap heaps in amongst hi-tech wonderment. Its all happening. And who could forget the way Razor girl introduces herself to Case after hes just had in effect an organ transplant? Truly unbeatable.
mollyMillions
Hyperion/The Fall of Hyperion
Dan Simmons
"Hyperion" is, to the best of my knowledge, the first SF novel that must be considered a literary masterpiece, which is to say, canonical as literary fiction. In mho, it marks the emergence of contemporary SF as Literature. And because Dan Simmons wrote such a beautiful novel back in 1989, a generation of SF writers has emerged to compose a species of fiction unprecedented in the history of Literature, a species that thenceforth redefined the idea of the SF novel. That may be overstating the case, but the purity and overpowering poetical sensibility of Simmon's writing cannot be disputed. And in no way to diminish the achievements of Gene Wolfe and Robert Silverberg - the grandfathers of literary SF - but I thihnk that Simmons was the first novelist to deliberately embrace the so-called literary canon and weave it into a profound and beautiful SF tapestry. "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion" constitute a single novel ("The Hyperion Cantos"), and taken as a single story it is a breathtaking affirmation of the imaginative storyteller's art and craft. But it is not simply a story well told, it is SF. And that means it is about ideas. "Hyperion" and its sequel are ideas cloaked in literature. They are, in point of fact, novels that provoke wonder - which is exactly what science fiction has always been about.
Lucius
Time Out Of Joint
Philip k Dick
very intriguing plot - a man who plays crosswords everyday, living in a small town California, USA. Unknown to him or us early on in the story is that he is in fact helping the military intercept missiles fired at earth from rebels on a moon base. The film, Truman Show, staring Jim Carey is loosely based on this si-Fi novel. Great little book!
Artymart
A great, rich novel masquerading as a fantasy/SF story.
unclebob
The Forever War
Joe Haldeman
'Nam in space with promiscuous mixed sex space marine grunts fighting the Taurans. Wry observations on the military and humanity from the returning soldiers isolated from society by the effects of relativity on time caused by near to light speed travel. A great ending. A pacy read, sexy and like all good SF wrong on lots of details but contains many truths about mankind.
Rondohatoff
the peace war
vernor vinge
In a near-future world where technological progress has been frozen by the all powerful peace authority, renegade scientists discover the secret of the bobbles used to cloak weapons, bases and even cities and turn the technology to their own advantage to bring down the peace authority.
buzz
Ringworld
Larry Niven
future societies! even more than the tech, the aliens, the alien conspiracies, I like Niven's world as it's based on how our society might develop based upon just a few technology tools like organ transplantation, mechanical (vs psychic) teleportation, interstellar travel, rejuvenation and the society shaping events of war, alien inventions, alien manipulation, etc.
Centauri
Startide Rising
David Brin
At the local library when I was 17, I discovered the Uplift Saga. Starting with book 2. Star Tide Rising. I loved its exploration of conciousness with the idea of spreading sapience to other animals on earth - dolphins and chimps. I found it very positive about humanity as alien hordes threatened to destroy human cultures or humanity itself. I've not read many sci fi where despite flaws you get drawn into such a pro humanity narrative. The setting was enjoyable, marooned on a water world with a crew of dolphins. I can easily imagine from his writings that such a place must exist. I would recommend the rest of saga but for me startide rising stood out.
heroicsteve
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
It completely changed my view on life, the universe and everything - literally: the absurdity and hilarious nonsense of being alive
maro22
Ubik
Philip K. Dick
As madly inventive as anything Dick wrote. From memory it has space travel, timeslips, psychics AND anti-psychics, half dead souls feeding off one another's life force in vats, inexplicable kinks in the nature of reality - but it's also tightly, economically constructed, which some of his books aren't. Plus it's hands down the scariest book I've ever read.
Ed B
Spook Country
William Gibson
Because it is one of the best novels I've read in the past four years, and I don't just mean SF. It's based, when? tomorrow? the day after? It doesn't really matter it is so on the button that you just know that this is how things will be. Cyberpunks lost in the cities of the future with exactly the same angst and doubts that we here on earth suffer today. Gibson is at the height of the game in SF I simple can't think of anyone, with the exception of Michael Faber and his Under the Skin that comes anywhere near.
Pace cadet
The Drowned World
J.G. Ballard
In a world heating up and regressing back to an ancient state, a man who lives in the lagoons above a flooded London struggles with the dying remains of old-world society and instead of heading north to safety decides to head south, towards the heat and towards the primal chaos the world is descending into. This is J.G. Ballard's second novel and possibly the clearest examples of his highly metaphorical science fiction novels. In The Drowned World we start see the J.G. Ballard use his objective, unemotional style that is a characteristic of his early short stories in a novel.
fragmad
The Dispossessed
Ursula le Guin
Sci fi at its worst is nothing more than cheap thrills - an update on the penny dreadful. At its best it offers nothing less than new stages on which to explore the nature of humanity. Le Guin's novel is at the best end of SF. It doesn't really matter that the setting is on some mythical planets; what is important is the people in the story, their struggles to make sense of life and society, their sufferings and their joys. It is a deeply human book. Le Guin has a gift for looking beneath surface inessentials, even those connected with gender, and seeing through to the real. Finally, although this obviously won't appeal to all, it is the most faithful and gripping account of the process of scientific discovery I have ever read. A lovely, memorable book, not just a good SF book but a great novel as well.
roundthings
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein is the seminal novel that deals with the human condition versus the unknown. Shelley takes us on a finely detailed journey among science and what can be created from it even from back in the recesses of the imagination. I first read Frankenstein when I was 12. Shelley created a story where I hadn't felt such flow of sympathy between the creator and the monster. It compelled me to think of my own existence in an unsure world. What better way to start a SF journey such as with Frankenstein's monster's thirst for knowledge and acceptance in a society that only saw terror in the unknown.
JacqValencia
Russian precursor to Brave New World and 1984, which are probably on everyone's list.
James
His Master's Voice
Stanislaw Lem
His Master's Voice is one of the purest, most philosophical and accomplished SF novels I've ever read.
lyserge
Dhalgren
Samuel R Delany
I'd recommend people read this because it's either, as Theodore Sturgeon said, "a literary landmark" or, as P K Dick claimed, "trash". Folk should read it and decide for themselves. Me? I'm with Sturgeon.
nogger
Raising the Stones
Sheri Tepper
A compelling, complex speculative fictional work. One of the best examples of its genre combining nuanced social commentary and interplay of dystopian and utopian imagination.
dls
Lays the foundation for this incredible series.
Renault
House of Suns
Alastair Reynolds
Great ships, great robots and a knock-out plot from an author who takes general relativity seriously enough to work through its mind-scrambling implications
Richard Lea
ho Fell to Earth
Walter Tevis
This is "The Day the Earth Stood Still" meets "The Days of Wine and Roses". It proclaims the glories of science, technology and industry while at the same time reminding us of the poignancy of our own personal fragilities. That, I think, is the real experience of us all in the 21st Century, sci-fi aside. This novel speaks with a poet's voice, as well. Read this, then read HG Wells' "The Food of the Gods" --out loud!
pgm3
Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham
As relevant now as it was when written in the 1950's. The themes of genetic engineering and mutations in crops were way ahead of their time. A very British apocalypse, the first encounters of the man-eating plants are on Hampstead Heath. The rest of the book, often described as a 'cosy catastrophe', winds it's way through an eerily empty London and the English countryside. The now common theme of a motley band of survivors combing vacated cities for food and water has been copied endlessley. Alex Garland admitted that the first 20mins of 28 Days Later was an 'exact replica' of the opening chapters of Day of the Triffids. Read it now if you haven't. Read it again if you have.
Dexxxx
Dune
Frank Herbert
Published in 1965; he was one of the founding fathers of Sci-Fi and helped lift the status of the genre from tacky cliche invasions, to a really rewarding choice of literature.
JohnHoldsKnee
Great meditation on being human, memory, guilt.
TMonk
Quarantine
Greg Egan
Egan's book opens with an investigator looking into an odd abduction and takes us through a world where any ability(TM) can be uploaded into the narrator's head. The investigation leads him to a bizarre experiment with quantum physics--and the discovery that loyalty, too, can be installed in the human brain. Egan plays with the idea of the quantum wave with deftness and assurance, and the way round the loyalty chip is a marvellous but logical twist in the tale.
DebbieUK
A wizard of Earthsea
Ursula K. Leguin
To continue along your lines, if all the fantasy books should burn in a cataclysm tomorrow, one which I would like to survive is "A wizard of Earthsea". A book which teaches you something about human nature is a wise book. Sparrowhawk, an indisputably intelligent young man falls victim to his own vanity, causing great tragedy to himself as well others, and then goes trough great difficulties to make amends. Despite being a fantasy (and the world is something you've never experienced before, nor will you experience it after), it is relevant, especially today, when a handful of young man and women (admittedly less often) have so much power bestowed upon them (think Gates, the Google owners, then Zuckerberg). On the bookshelf of my mind, it sits together with Mann, Beckett, Dostojevski, and Shakespeare. Unfortunately, today it is less know than many over-marketed, multi volume rainforest destroyers.
Farandbeyond
Vector Prime
R.A. Salvatore
This book kicks off one of the greatest SF story arcs of all time. Throw in the death of a beloved character in the Star wars Universe and the fultiliy of the events in the book....wow.
bmarch1
The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut
What's different and great about The Sirens of Titan is that it's one of the few sci-fi novels to posit cock-up theory as the main driver for universal history, as it takes a sweeping, entertaining romp through the universe. As Dougas Adams observed, its seemingly casual throwaway style is in fact the result of very tight writing. Oh, and it's very very funny.
Brodav
Technically SF as set in a postulated future (as seen from 1932), and very funny.
Mithalwen
Raising the Stones
Sherri Tepper
It's a complex story with themes of religious fanaticism and patriarchy By the end there are, perhaps, as many questions raised as answered. But for me, it is the strength of the women. Their stories, lives and sacrifices.
Pengwyn
Day of the Triffids
John Whyndham
Thought provoking about how Society works and human foibles - incredibly prescient (I fear) as Climate Change begins. But all the while, truly gripping as a straightforward adventure
rowingrob
Heliconia trilogy
Brian W. Aldiss
I would recommend this book as it covers a one-year period in the time-frame of the planet Heliconia, a period of some several hundred Earth years, and presents a fine analogy of the rise and fall of a human civilisation that in the end cannot help, due to a major seasonal change, fall victim to the weather itself and the rulers of the planet become those whom the humans enslaved and trod upon during the hot portion of the year. All the while, the planet is being observed from space by scientists who must endure their own evolution. I found the series to be well imagined and well written and have read it twice in the last 25 years, or so.
Taltos1667
The Midwich Cuckoos
John Windham
John Windham was in the happy position of being able to write good prose whilst at the same time being a terrific ideas man. The story about a group of weird children born into a rural English village after some rum doings asks big questions about competition, survival and who really is in control. It was made into a fairly solid horror film called Village of the Damned and the Hollywood remake wasn't too bad either.
Tess
Cthulhu Mythos
HP Lovecraft
I know, it's not exactly SF but it's not even only an horror setting. There's the fear of unknown, the cosmic terror, the deep space and alien stars... brilliant!
Demo
Against a Dark Background
Iain M Banks
Gets right into the action without long-winded delving into the minutia of the fictional society's functioning; no moralizing on the superiority of the fictional society; doesn't rely on technology that wouldn't be available given current scientific understanding; fully-fleshed characters, especially female characters, the protagonist in particular; imaginative mirror society quirks
fixedgod
Valis
pkd
mad writing from almost crazy guy. A good antidote to the typical space warrior sub-teen crap ...
Equinephillia
Project Anastrophe
George Karnikis
With the Fukushima nuclear explosions﻿ it is more important to read this book today. "In this Sci Fi novel one finds relevancy to our time. We live in a time of possible nuclear war. Oil and other pollutants have caused irreversible damage to our ecosystem. "Project Anastrophe" shows how much worse it could be, and offers hope."
Concerned
The Steps of the Sun
Walter Tevis
This is great grown up and very prophetic sci-fi, written by a newly sober Walter Tevis (The Hustler, Man who fell to Earth etc) in the early 80s. Basically its the story of a bored and literally impotent millionaire as he stumbles through an energy starved future where the US can no longer afford to light its skycrapers and China is the number 1 economic power (thanks to a strangely familiar form of capitalism, dressed in communist clothes). It is so unbelieveably prophetic (one of the key characters is a charming, well educated and articulate former Black president) but the focus for Teavis is less on technology and more on political and economics, and people (okay he still has something called the USSR bouncing around in the early 2000s but he was an author, not Mystic Meg). There's also some wonderful stuff when Tevis' protagonist takes a trip to a very alien world to cure his boredom and lose weight (read the book and it will make sense) and accidently cures his impotence (yes really!). Tevis also manages to create real characters you can believe in with real personal problems, and that's not something you always get (done well anyway) in sci-fi or speculative fiction. I'd recommend it to buy but its long out of print. I bought my tatty 2nd hand copy from a New York state library, via the tinternet. Regards FF
Frank Frenz
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Douglas Adams.
Neither the radio or TV versions have done any justice at all to this great, great book. Not only is every bit as funny as you'd expect for Adams, it also has one of the most fabulously cryptic plots you could hope for. I first read it a couyple of times in my late teens and enjoyed it enormously but it was three years later before it's true brilliance dazzled me. I sat in a university tutorial listening to the tale of Coleridge dreaming up Kubla Khan in a laudanum haze but being disturbed by the man from Porlock, before he could set it down. I gasped and embarrassed myself in front of my tutor as the penny dropped regarding one of the finer points of the plot of DG. I made my way home, ignored my course work and the godawful "two part prelude" I was supposed to be reading and launched into Dirk Gently once again. Adams was not only one of the funniest writers about, he also managed to examine ideas and science with a skill and a level of understanding that is often not appreciated. I delight in this book still and reread it regularly. It is a masterpiece and I wish somebody would make a proper film of it and not bugger it up.
hrhpod
got the lot:- time travel political intrigue dystopian facistic state soscial collapse
trax
Ark and Flood
Stephen Baxter
2 book series following the slow flooding of Earth and the eventual collapse of civilisation, with the survivors launched onto a mission to a distant solar system but the steady failure of relationships during the long voyage causes a number of factions to appear, meanwhile on earth the fianl taking to the waters for the remaining population and their slow transformation to semi-aquatic life.
trax
The Player of Games
Iain M. Banks
The first Banks book I read, this is a stunning introduction to the universe of the Culture, his egalitarian, post-scarcity society. The book follows the journey of Morat Jernau Gurgeh, a cynical, arrogant, and brilliant game player to an imperialistic civilisation rife with inequality, sexual slavery and the brutal application of power. It's filled with Banks trademark witty dialogue, discomfiting themes and vivid, brilliant imagination. A classic.
DanMHarris
The Colour Out of Space
H. P. Lovecraft
I read it when I was a child. At that time Carl Sagan's Cosmos was on TV and I was hooked on science divulgation. Lovecraft's descriptions of a meteorite's odd substance that feed on live, disseminate and has an indefinable color triggered my imagination (and populated some nightmares).
Ramiro
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K Le Guin
It is a very imaginative, yet credible, tale of a lone human's impressions of two opposed alien civilizations. The portrayal of the human and non-human characters involved is extremely well done, and novel is thought-provoking throughout.
Allium
Engine Summer
John Crowley
Though the story is set in a post-apocalypse America, it breaks with the 'traditional' disaster scenarios usually portrayed. Instead there is a beautiful child-like quality to it, enhanced by the sufi-like 'the end is the beginning' conclusion.
thatloosecannon
Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson
I'd picked up Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" trilogy before finding Cryptonomicon and was instantly swept away by the astonishing depth and breadth Stephenson achieved while still keeping me turning the pages as fast as I could. After finishing those first three books I felt completely bereft of Stephenson's world and went out to get Cryptonomicon as soon as possible. Told in two time periods and with multiple protagonists (not to mention graceful and fascinating infodumps on cryptology, mathematics, early computing, financial systems, corporate law...the list goes on), you would have thought the narrative would be confusing and sketchy, but Stephenson pulls it off with amazing aplomb and skill. Each characters is thoroughly drawn, each landscape evoked in vivid colour, and all the while it remains brilliant fun. This is a first rate example of the alternate history branch of science fiction.
whatwedoissecret
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World is perhaps the most terrifying and relevant dystopian novel written. Social engineering and a mass produced society is counterpointed by the 'savages' outside, whilst stuck in the middle is John a reject from both societies.
SyntheticMan
Solaris
Stanisław Lem
Written fantastically, keeping the reader on the edge. Its suspense kept me going, amazing Sc-fi from the 60s
Garveyc
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula Le Guin
I choose this because it is a brilliantly non-sf, sf book. There are no guns, no super technologies, no obvious male heroes, no wars, etc.There is a spaceship but we never see it. All these cliches seem to be shunned as examples of very male-centric sf writing. The novel deals with themes of gender, sexuality, politics, religion and more. The inhabitants of the planet Gethen are entirely androgynous and visited by a male from the distant, more technically advanced planet Earth who tries to understand them. The author seems to suggest that the duality inherent in the human race could be at he heart of negatives such as war (Gethen has never known one) as well as positives such as technological progress. I'll admit to not being a massiv fan of SF. This impressed because it is undoubtedly science fiction yet it drops nearly all of the conventions.
ewandme
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
A ship setting off to visit an alien world, unseen by most humans. A narrator pondering his place withing his homeworld and his own society and speculating on the lives, motives and drives of the giant, unknowable, half unseen aliens he encounters, all explained in enthralling terms to an audience as unfamiliar with whaling as most modern readers are with the surface of Europa.
Tim Cunion
Blew me away when I first read it and still holds up when I re-read
fearful symmetry
The Stainless Steel Rat
Harry Harrison
A highlight from the pulp age, and pre-Hitchhiker sf humour. A Rat book was the first book I borrowed from the 'big' ie adult library and started a life-long love of sf
 
Night's Dawn Trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction,
Peter F. Hamilton
This trilogy is epic science-fiction at its best. Hamilton covers may characters and planets in a brilliant adventure through space, with the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance. As ever, Hamilton's books are sci-fi marvels, and I can safely say Night's Dawn is the best trilogy I have read, of any genre.
AAM
Lavondyss
Robert Holdstock
I was going to suggest Dan Simmons masterpiece Hyperion but the article states I don't have to be quite that strict in my definition of what constitutes 'sf'. So Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss it is. A brilliant haunting and deeply distubing take on rural myths, Jungian philosophy,complete with gorgeous prose that fits into some sort of celtic myth cycle. Never read anything quite like it.
Nearly Headless Ned
Eifelheim
Michael Flynn
I don't normally read SF, but the combination of medieval Germany and first contact, interwoven with physics, religion, and the multiverse was too hard to resist. Eifelheim is a beautiful read, elegant and extremely moving. I've not read anything in the last five years that I've loved as much.
Donna McKinnon/Canada
Engine Summer
John Crowley
Here's a book that's entirely SF but that actually improves if read as literature.It isn't just about content or form, but the sensibility, the connections it makes and the respect it has for the reader and our ability to work out the whole story from an incomplete account by a damaged but heroic first-person narrator. It's about narrative, and it's a bildungsroman set in a world we can only know from that whole working-out-the-rules game and about a young man we can only know from knowing that world. It's very sixties: the author wrote the first draft, then learned how to do SF, then rewrote it in the late 70s once it was so out-of-synch with the times as to be entirely itself. Imagine 'In Watermelon Sugar' written by an adult. Imagine the future bits of 'Cloud Atlas' by someone who knew what he was doing. Imagine 'The Road' made to seem almost beguiling until you figure out what is going to happen after the book ends. It's not about the obvious 'props' (spaceships, robots, time-paradoxes), it's about making words work differently. This is the form of writing that amplifies what the mainstream can do, and 1979 was almost the last time we were allowd to read books this without any stigma. Thanks a bunch, Mr Lucas.
Tat Wood
Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
My family belong to a rather "literary" book club whose selection tended to consist of anything from the "top 20" in most high street bookshops. I suggested my sister set them Ender's Game to take them "out of the box" to try a different genre. The experiment was a success - and I was even asked to lend out the sequels... So my recommendation is based on it being a good read and one that can represent the genre and be an introduction to "non-believers" :D
acorn01
A brilliant, mature, creative novel in verse. Amazing feat.
st-angeleno
Feersum Endjinn
Iain M Banks
Banks created a dark, gothic and beautiful world (not part of the Culture scenario) that reviews the long term use of our technologies and political systems in similar ways to the near/mid-term predictions of Gibson and others. It's a modern Diaspar, rich in detail and adventure but also, wonderfully, humour, which so much SF leaves out. The characters are unusually well drawn (even for Banks) and the narrative multi-layered and satisfying.
Peepee
A Fire Upon The Deep
Vernor Vinge
A Hugo winning classic space opera, with varied and well thought out aliens and an interesting premise about how transcended cultures interact with more primitive ones. Even though it was published 20 years ago it remains extremely fresh while some more modern books feel dated.
HirO
Hello Summer, Goodbye
Michael G Coney
This takes a well-worn piece of SF furniture and gives it an elegant, very English, reworking. It could look to the unwary like a straightforward teenage boy's account of coming-of-age and his relationship witha girl his parents thought was beneath their station but it's much more piquant and subtle than this. The society described is treacherously similar to pre-War England (specifically the West Country) but the force of change isn't politics or war but astrophysics. Our narrator survives, but what it costs him to be able to tell us this is left unsaid. If the details that aren't like a mangled 'Five Go To Smuggler's Cove' are put together in the right way the reader can anticipate some of the ending but the curt last line confused inattentive reviewers. Coney makes a lived-in world and its passing is made more painful than some real societies in less well-written autobiographies. I've noticed that a lot of people who loved this book thought they were the only one who'd ever read it, but I'll recommend it to strangers anyway. (There was a belated sequel that spelled everything out for the less nimble reader but nobody likes that as much).
Tat Wood
The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury
While some people have said this book is NOT science fiction, i feel its a seminal group of short stories in the general direction of SF.
LaBowe
I Am Legend
Richard Mattheson
Despite only being a short novel, It manages to deliver the most crushing sense of isolation you could possibly feel - the kind you must feel when you are the last man alive on earth, and everyone else wants to drain you dry. The passages of Robert Neville sat drinking whisky alone in the dark listening to classical music - as the haunting vampires are particularly effective. A dark - (almost black) sense of humour and an incredible explanation for the usually unexplained scientific aspects of a vampiric post apocalyptic world, combined with my personal favourite ending twist to any book I've ever read. I'll leave it for you to discover the desperation that can occur in one man when he is so alone , but I THOROUGHLY recommend this epic novella.
TheChuzzle
War of the worlds
HG Wells
I love the period that this book is set in. No super technology, well, on the human's part anyway. The fact that the main character walks everywhere and get's his information from the newspaper or by word of mouth is interesting. No mobile phones, no internet etc... The descriptions of the horror and violence make the reader use his or her imagination...you're not spoon fed gory details. It's not gung ho in anyway any your actually able to digest what's going on. The parallel theme of man facing total anhilation and only having Victorian thinking to comombat it is very refreshing.
Artpunx
It isn't a simple good vs evil sci-fi book. Very strange novel indeed.
LightCreatedByAir
Stars In My Pockets Like Grains of Sand
Samuel R Delany
This is the mutant love-child of Henry James and Theodore Sturgeon. Sex, murder, species... these are trivial matters on the galactic scale but library membership is worth going to war over. Instead of neologisms with lots of apostrophes we have words such as 'job', 'she', 'family' reallocated to things we almost, nearly, if-I-hold-my-breath-and-screw-up-my-eyes comprehend. In 1984 it was bewildering (and it's the first half of a pair, the second of which was never even published)but with the advent of wikipedia the idea of 'Cultural Fugue' and 'General Information' as a covert system of control are more graspable. (In the opening section some kind of ultimate Kindle is used as a tool of slavery, and people have books chained to themselves as fetishistic signs). The novel's focus is a simple question: what if falling in love risked not just killing everyone you knew but unravelling entire worlds? The usual space-opera stuff is happening off-stage, but in front of us is a meditation on 'the drunkenness of things being various'. And after what can be described as nail-biting climax there is an epistemological moment at the end if this first book that other writers would have made into whole trilogies. The second half might have been a let-down, or simply spiralled into Foucauldian angst. The book we have is a treasure, although -seriously - not for everyone.
Tat Wood
Elvissey
Jack Womack
A visceral, speed-freak tale of capitalism run amok, the viral power of language, penance and redemption of the American soul, and the apotheosis of Elvis.
Aaron K
The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester
It's a great epic crammed into a couple of hundred pages, full of ideas, excitement and dark humour.
Chris88
More Than Human
Theodore Sturgeon
It's more inner than outer space but, as you'd expect of Sturgeon (and indeed the whole SF genre) it gets your mind pondering the big stuff....
Bex
The Alchemical marriage of Alistair Crompton
Robert Sheckley
You know that thing of 'where do you get those crazy ideas?' SF authors get asked? If anyone had dosed Douglas Adams with Sodium Pentathol he would have said 'Robert Sheckley'. 'The Alchemical Marriage...' is the most complete novel this ace short-story writer managed to produce: he just had too much going on for anything like a coherent plot most of the time. Even then, this has about as simple a framing device as you can get: someone who had his personality split into the mediaeval Four Humours wants to be whole again and so chases down the other people made by splitting his original personality, putting each bit in a new body and giving them jobs on different planets. (Yes, that old stand-by). That's a tent-pole from which to hang a string of bizarre situations. Adams took more than just plot-details - check out, for example, 'Ask A Foolish Question' - he took a sensibility that came from the 50s 'Galaxy' Magazine stable, and which Sheckley pushed to its limit; a sardonic look at SF's inherited grab-bag of plots and props form a generation of writers who grew up on 'Astounding Science Fiction' and 'The New Yorker'. He was poised precisely between Robert Heinlein and James Thurber. Not all of it has aged well but this book will give you an idea of whether you want to go into his back-catalogue.
Tat Wood
A book that veers between black humour, sexual escapades and the poignanacy of growing old.
tedooboy
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Kate Wilhelm
This 35-year-old novel about human clones surviving the end of civilisation won a Hugo award in 1977 and somehow seems to become more resonant with the passing of time. Wilhelm is an elegant and versatile, and prolific, writer. I grew up borrowing her and husband Damon Knight's books from my local library, but with our bookshops swamped with franchised doorstops, she never seems to get the attention she deserves. My second nomination would be Damon Knight's The Man in the Tree
HolyhosesRob
A Door Into Ocean
Joan Slonczewski
Most SF, let's be honest, borrows its toys from other SF under a fair-use policy; the best definition of 'Hard' SF opposes it to 'easy' (which is basically collage). Hard SF builds worlds from scratch using only fresh ingredients. Here, marine biology is used to take on two of 60s SF's sacred cows, Frank Herbert and Ursula le Guin, to patiently say 'no, this is what it would really be like'. In one key sequence the characters describe a form of passive resistance using an analogy taken from their 'handicraft' of DNA synthesis - a clued-up reader might spot that it's the rather arcane phenomenon of quantum tunnelling described as Quaker lesbian fish-people would see it. Sadly, this book is handy for the uninspiring off-the-shelf university courses of feminist utopias. It's better than that. It assumes you're familiar with old-time SF standbys and are ready to see them slyly mocked (so the Heinlein-style Ol'timer really IS old, and we ought to have figured out why earlier). It gets a bit earnest at times but it avoids easy answers and wish-fulfillment. A must for anyone who thought 'Avatar' was worth all that money.
Tat Wood
Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
This is an entertaining story with something to say about leadership. It's also accessible to most ages - my 9 year-old just read it and Ender's Shadow.
tj66
Dhalgren
Samuel Delany
This book continues to haunt me after one read 3 years ago. Great writing, plot twists, strangeness, characters. The imagery is vivid in my mind's eye. I would recommend this book to anyone who reads scifi.
oneshoe
Rite of Passage
Alexei Panshin
Not only is this book a fascinating tale about a very interesting main character, it is a sugar-coated crash course in ethics and philosophy. I first read this book when I was not too much older than the main character. The thoughts and concepts I encountered in it helped me expand my own boundaries as much as Mia does, and I've always been grateful for it. In my opinion, this book should be a mandatory part of every high school reading curriculum. Although published in 1968, it hasn't lost a shred of relevancy to today's society, and I was immensely pleased when Rite of Passage was reprinted in 2007. When you need some strengthening meat and potatoes on your TBR plate to counteract a surfeit of cotton candy, reach for this book. You won't be sorry. Neuromancer? Give me a break. It is getting so that stuff called science fiction is so intellectually shallow it is not worth paying attention to anymore. Gibson didn't know squat about computers when he wrote that. Try The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James P. Hogan. Hyperion is not even science fiction. And they gave the Hugo to a Harry Potter book in 2001. The world is coming to an end. LOL
psikeyhackr
Hyperion
Dan Simmons
Simmons stories are almost always something different, yet they still manage to feel familiar at the same time. I will have to keep my 9 year-old away from this one for a bit longer though.
tj66
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller Jr.
I've always had a thing for the postapocalyptic genre, as it enables an author to mediate on three major, interlocking SF issues: 1) what it means to be human, even when humanity's faux-teleological progress has been incinerated; 2) how culture (incl. technology, art, politics and religion) functions or can function; and 3) how people deal with the most extreme of circumstances (very few people around, mutations, little food, no societal stability, etc.). No novel I know of has done this better than "A Canticle for Leibowitz," which spans hundreds of years, but keeps to a small, personal scale while beautifully, eloquently showing the interactions of institutions, governments, science and religion. People coping with a by-gone world with all they have, even if all they have are myths and fear. A masterful piece of literature, an amazing feat of SF.
CCQA (the Netherlands)
Golem 100
Alfred Bester
The closest you will ever come to 'reading' a trip on psychotropic substances. It is a uniquely dark and twisted black comedy set in the 22nd Century. The Golem 100, a hundred handed multi-dimensional creature, is inadvertently summoned to earth by a group of women who have been performing half-hearted demonic séances using a variety of themes from many religious sects. The Golem 100 embarks on a career of chaos and murder hotly being pursued by the books ‘heroes’ Gretchen Nunn,Blaise Shima and Subadar Ind'dni. Like Anthony Burgesses ‘A Clockwork Orange’ there is a language barrier for the reader to overcome, but once you grasp the ‘future speak’ it adds to the depth of the world you have entered. Bester also switches from text to pictures throughout the novel, this unique edge creates a disturbing and unsettling atmosphere for the reader, but builds up the tension exquisitely Your final barrier is to find yourself a copy! The darn thing is currently out of print…e-bay and amazon might be the place to go!
jp67
The Stars my Destination (Tiger, Tiger)
Alfred Bester
Shakespeare in space and time.
Cheryl
My favorite SF author at his finest.
bobboisen
The Disposessed
Ursula K LeGuin
A simple idea about how people might shape societies told in an elegant story. It makes science and politics seem human and interesting. Which is quite an acheivement, at least as far as politics is concerned. Also I like that it is kind of downbeat.
Acmeist
Little, Big
John Crowley
More fantasy than science fiction but a totally engrossing tale of a New England family's relationship with the Faery kingdom. Very literary with hints of Lewis Carroll, Shakespeare, and Sufi poetry. Nominated for various awards including Nebula, Hugo, BSFA and Locus.
nogger
Flowers for Algernon
Daniel Keyes
A beautiful, fable-like story about the questionable (dangerous) approach of science manipulating human beings to supposedly advance them. Touching, heart-breaking, convincing and poignant. Wonderful.
bobbygw
Picnic on Paradise
Joanna Russ
A brilliant interpretation of telepathy in an advanced alien species; it's a wonderful, beautifully written story about the complexities of communication and understanding.
bobbygw
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Robert Heinlein
Sometimes the only way to get the bastards to pay attention is to chuck a rock or two at them. Secondly, I learned to speak (grok) 'computer' many years ago. Oops, that's two books.
mfrump
Hyperion
Dan Simmons
This drags you in and has you embroiled in the story from the start. It's one of those multiple tale formats with the characters int he book telling how they ended up on the quest. A complex picture builds - a mixture of sci fi, future tech and mythology. It's the kind of book I would have avoided but once I started it I was sucked into the story and devoured the trilogy.
pinkpostit
Hyperion
Dan Simmons
This drags you in and has you embroiled in the story from the start. It's one of those multiple tale formats with the characters int he book telling how they ended up on the quest. A complex picture builds - a mixture of sci fi, future tech and mythology. It's the kind of book I would have avoided but once I started it I was sucked into the story and devoured the trilogy.
pinkpostit
Hyperion
Dan Simmons
This drags you in and has you immersed in the story from the start. It's one of those multiple tale formats with the characters in the book telling how they ended up on the quest to kill the Shrike. The what? It's a terrifying merciless executioner that moves through multiple dimensions creating echos through the past and present. A complex picture builds - a mixture of sci fi, future tech and mythology. I loved the concepts in it - regeneration machines, man vs machine, neural internet connection, traveling between worlds through tamed wormholes and in particular building houses with rooms in different worlds especially the loo in the middle of a lake in a deserted planet.
pinkpostit
The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut
Ultimately very humbling and staggering book, as not only is the self-centered reader quite unimportant in the larger scheme of things, so is all of the human story.
readitat14
The Female Man
Joanna Russ
A radical take on sexuality, and the roles of men and women; this early sf text challenged presumptions and sexual stereotypes through its three female characters. Wonderful, and it remains insipring and thought-provoking.
bobbygw
Read at age 12, this book made me a lifetime fan of SF.
TRJ713
"The Book of the New Sun"
Gene Wolfe
epic, deeply complex, truely fantastical and amazing use of language SF's "Lord of the Rings"
metasolaris
Consider Phlebas
Iain M. Banks
I found myself in a conversation trying to remember the title of a brilliant film I'd seen...........turns out I was thinking of a scene from this book, which I'd read five years previously. I re-read it and it was still a fantastic, despondent glory.
Toadjuggler
1984
george orwell
This book opened y eyes, when i was a teen, to what politics really are: a eternall battle to maintain the status quo, and people, to politicians, don't really matter
rafaelluppi
The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester
has all the elements required of a good sci-fi, but was so early in the genre as to set the standard that others attempted to follow. (also known as "Tiger Tiger")
69dec
Brilliant satire, a great read
JohnArmstrong
Lord of Light
Roger Zelazny
Counted a New Wave writer by some, Roger Zelazny scavenged plots and characters from medieval romances and world mythology, mashed them through a pulp filter in the style of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald, added the zip and self-mocking outrageousness of the mid-1960s Marvel superhero comics, and injected the resulting narrative with sprays of impressionistic stream of consciousness description that put you fully in the sensory experience of the protagonist. Like his equally eccentric contemporary, R. A. Lafferty, when Zelazny was on, it all worked astonishingly, and even when he was off, it was a fascinating experiment. In Lord of Light he was definitely on. On a planet settled by colonists from Earth, the powerful and privileged from the original starship crew have hoarded the most advanced technology for their own benefit, giving themselves virtual immortality and god-like powers while their fellow humans slip into a new dark age. The new superhumans take on the names and attributes of gods and goddesses from the Hindu pantheon, so what better way for a disaffected member of the original clique to stir up rebellion than to resurrect Buddhism? Along the way he has to deal with demons (native energy-based lifeforms), assassins, former friends and lovers among what are now his enemies, the awful experience of being ripped from Nirvana and pulled back into a physical incarnation, and a competing rebel army of zombies directed by a Christian crew member. There are moments when the rococo prose nearly topples into total confusion, places where Zelazny's sentimental streak gets out of control, and snatches of grandiose dialogue that could use an extra shot of the (always present) Zelazny irony to avoid being silly. But there's also more humor and a more humane and thoughtful hero than in most of Zelazny's other novels. Lord of Light managed to be postmodern before more than a handful of people were using that term, and it managed be a ripping good adventure to boot.
Paul Connelly
Against the Day
Thomas Pynchon
Steam-punk or alternate history or whatever you want to call it, Pynchon’s 2006 novel is an incredibly rich SF pastiche. The plot is impossible to summarize but, simply (!), we’re taken along for the ride as the burgeoning scientific era impinges on the hundreds of intertwined characters, the world readies itself for doom, and we can do nothing but watch in horror with the Chums from their balloon. The quality of the writing lifts this into a realm of its own; nobody else can handle sentences like Pynchon and retain the warmth and humour he is constantly able to muster, even when writing complicated pages of ‘math-fi’. This was published less than five years ago, so, once the dust settles look for this to be considered one of the greats. In Pynchon’s own words: “Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck”.
Sergius
Hyperion Cantos
Dan Simmons
The Hyperion Cantos. released as two books due to the publisher not wanting to take a chance on a Huge book from a relative unknown new comer (Ironic since telephone books has since become the norm) This is Writing on a Grand Scale. The Space Opera Book to start and End all. Due to the foolish publication, many readers viewed the ending to Hyperion as one judges the end of books, not knowing that the next book is no sequel. But the remaining part of one book. A Terrible Decision that at the time cheapened what should have gone down as the Greatest Single Volume of SF ever constructed. And not one that made some people go "WTF" at the end. Truly Amazing Stuff that may start slow for some but don't be fooled, it does more with a 1000 pages then most do with a career. His consequent Hyperion books were more bloated and less story driven, much like whats considered the finer SF being writing today. Reynolds "Revelation Space is a Homage to this book.
midas68
Riddley Walker
Russell Hoban
This book is what SF is for, or should be for: huge invention, a story for the ages - literally - and a whole new language to tell it in
Boole
Perdido Street Station
China Mieville
An almost overpowering mix of politics, language and invention barely constrained in a thrilling plot. Every second page has an idea thrown in for local colour that other authors would build entire novels around.
MrKip
The Black Cloud
fred hoyle
both beautiful and devastating, the simple fact that the events could be science truth, and the honest and cutting representation of careerist humans alongside our fragility and smallness within the wider universe is utterly compelling
hanayama
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Phillip K Dick
Dune
Frank Herbert
Well were do I start it took me somewhere that not even David Lynch,H R Giger could not replicate in its imagination.Its a classic story of conflict and family set in a world of intergalactic spacing guilds and mile long worm.
Quizzard
The Centauri Device
M John Harrison
It's a reworking of Space Opera that broke away from the previous heroic poses and opened up the genre to more thoughtful writing.
GB Steve
The Road
Cormac MacCarthy
I'm sure I'll be one of scores of readers name-dropping the book. But it was what every genre-besting SF novel should be - the kind of inexplicably haunting tale that burrows into your dreams.
elliereplies
Lord of Light
Roger Zelazny
The interaction between elites, technology, and religion, and how elites use technology and religion to maintain their position.
johnnyninefingers
The Müller-Fokker Effect
John Sladek
One of the few SF novels with real humour, sharp satire. I think Sladek may have been channeling great unread mainstream author William Gaddis, but that's no bad thing.
Boole
Dhalgren
Samuel Delany
Having been a Speculative Fiction addict, once I read this meditation on myth, identity, sexual politics, etc. I stopped reading SF. Nothing else comes close (except maybe Delany's 'Triton').
st.nick
Wonderful to read, great plot and believable characters,
Shecat
We
Yevgeny Zamyatin
The book without which 1984 would not have been. And although Orwell refined and elaborated on the concept to produce a better book, that We was written before the death of Lenin makes it truly, remarkably precient. Orwell had TVs that watch you back, Zamyatin, writing before television had been invented had glass buildings.
stephenwelsh
Other Days, Other Eyes
Bob Shaw
Bob Shaw 'invented' slow glass, a crystalline material that retains light waves and gradually transmits it to the viewer, with the time delay being dependant upon the thickness of the pane. Too many other sf writers would have spun out this radical new concept into at least two trilogies. Shaw examines all the possibilities in one admirably compact novel (incorporating three 'sidelight' short stories), while at the same time managing to construct a warmly human narrative.
Ulsterfan
It's a classic that's very readable. And still one of the best SciFi books around.
David Greybeard
Ubik
Philip K Dick
Ubik (1969) is a great novel because it provides page-turning entertainment as a straight SF/mystery story whilst also asking some pretty big existential questions: How do we know what's real? How do we know we're really alive? Who is really in control of our world? Central to the novel is the idea of "half-life", a virtual-reality world inhabited by the semi-dead; people whose brains are artificially kept alive whilst their dead bodies are held in cryogenic store. Living people can communicate with half-lifers via telephone - a simple but brilliant idea. But, with all the weird goings-on, are the "living people" really alive themselves? Who's alive and who's dead? Amidst all this confusion is the consumer product that keeps cropping up - in TV adverts, on posters, in radio commercials - the mysterious spray-can cure-all known as "Ubik". Ubik is the ultimate restorative substance - and maybe the only thing that can save our hero from the tide of entropy. Dick never spells out exactly what Ubik is suppose to be - a metaphor for God? For hope? For humanity? Reader, you decide - because ultimately, Dick seems to suggest, none of us can know with any certainty the answers to these big questions.
MikeAlx
Deathbird Stories
Harlan Ellison
This is a short story collection, one of many by Ellison, but this is the first one I read and it knocked me for six with it's tone and imaginative breadth. This was speculative fiction, not classic sci-fi. The first story in the book, "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs", made me angry. I disliked Ellison straight away for the negative slant of the story, the lack of faith in humanity, the loss of hope. I couldn't forget about it though, couldn't stop thiking about his ideas, they needed to be confronted and understood. After reading the rest of the stories in this collection my opinion did a vast 180 and Ellison became one of my favourite authors. He doesn't seem to get too much mention in science fiction discourse but he was one of the leading lights of the New Wave in the 60s, editing the "Dangerous Visions" anthology which helped define that era. "Deathbird Stories" is essential Ellison reading but he had many other short story collections out there which are equally worthy of attention.
birds
I Am Legend
Richard Matheson
It has vampires, it has a strange virus, it has the collapse of society and the beginnings of something new and strange. But, like all the best SF (in my opinion) it uses its genre trappings to explore something very very human.
John H
More than Human
Theodore Sturgeon
because instead of being about alien worlds, wars or invasions it is about our evolution and the capacity of human beings to change, develop and become....better
peter flack
Neuromancer
William Gibson
As good as anything ever written in the genre. Ranks with all of the greats authors out there. Really more of a work of literature.
john lee
Dancers at the End Of Time
michael moorcock
Its a SF book but not in the traditional sense. Its written in the style and genre of the traditional victorian early SF writters such as H G Wells but with a very modern sensability. It is worthy of mention for the simple reason that it is often over looked but is simple and whimsical. It crosses genres but remains within SF. Why it hasnt been made in to a film is understandable but sad as the story is elegant and timeless. It is the only book on my shelf that I re read on a regular basis
PureedGerbil
Dune
Frank Herbert
Epic in scope, light on technology; the story of feuding family. A feudal system written across a galaxy.
Martin Veart
Revelation Space
Alastair Reynolds
Have to agree with Chojinalpha - any of the modern hard space opera Brit author like Alastair Reynolds would be my recomendation.
Paul R
NOIR
K W Jeter
I suspect this one may be missed by others. Like all extraordinary books this both defines and annihilates a genre simultaneously. A dark brooding future dystopia; Bladerunner crossed with Tiger, Tiger except on stronger drugs. A noir thriller where the 'hero' is a serial killer who sees the world as a 1940's noir film. Incredible set pieces and hallucinogenic passages mixed with dark humour and extreme violence? Whats not to recommend?
alivee2011
Engine Summer
John Crowley
John Crowley's Engine Summer is science fiction's great secret masterpiece. A novel about the centrality of storytelling to the human experience, Engine Summer also boasts the tightest fit between a book's title and its contents that I have ever encountered. The novel itself IS an engine summer. Quiet, lyrically subtle, strangely undemonstrative, this is a book that sneaks up on you, slowly building its intertwinements of theme and character and richly varied detail up to an ending that's both devastating and inspiring, and the greatest denouement I know of. If you get it, it will blow you away; if you don't (and about half its readers fail to), you'll wonder what the hell I'm talking about. I said it was science fiction's secret masterpiece? Make that 20th century English literature's secret masterpiece.
Ron Drummond
Lord of Light
Roger Zelazny
Sci fi + Indian myth. Finishes a close race ahead of The Day of the Triffids and A Caniticle for Leibowitz.
quaziluffy
This Perfect Day
Ira Levin
Highly imaginative novel. It depicts the mere hollowness and vulnerability of dictatorship (technological, ideological, religious, etc.)
Farz
Camp Concentration
Thomas M Disch
A beautifully-written disquisition on intelligence, imprisonment and power relationships that concludes with a brilliant coup de theatre. Disch was also a poet and his use of language is extraordinary for someone writing in the genre. But this should not distract from the pure pleasure of watching his plot unfold and blind us with brilliance at the end.
keithyd
Elvissey
Jack Womack
Jack's work is incredible... William Gibson's favorite living author, he created a frightening and credible dystopia with wit, humor and outlandish bravura. His stuff is outta print now but you can Amazon it. Do!
Austin D H Ivers
Tales of pilot Pirx
Stanislaw Lem
Lem, despite of his Central European handicap is out there alongside Asimov, AC Clark, Bester and others.
Tops Pops
The Tripods
Samuel Youd under the pseudonym John Christopher
One of the best SF thrillers ever with compelling adventure story filled with action and suspense. I read it when i was a kid and loved it and reread many times. The white mountains, the first in the series is just perfect.
Armenotti
The Boat of a Million Years
Poul Anderson
From the dark recesses of time to the far future, Highlander-esque individuals that are immortal do their best to live in a world that won't accept them and would kill them if the truth were known. Fascinating characters in in impossible situations and a wonderful survey of human history as if the reader were present makes for a superb novel.
John Ottinger III
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon)
This is a collection of short stories written by the incisive, ruthless mind and warm, human heart of Alice Sheldon who wrote as James Tiptree Jr. (named after the marmalade manufacturer). It contains some of the most thought provoking and moving tales and takes you on incredible imaginitive leaps - for me the essence of SF.
Justina Robson
The Man in the High Castle
Phillip K Dick
A superb alternative history of the Cold War and America with wonderfully realised characters, as well as all the usual sci-fi trappings. Explores everything from consumerism to the nature of reality itself.
LHRT
Oryx & Crake
Margaret Atwood
It's got all the elements of a great science fiction book; dystopia, post-apocalypse, genetic engineering etc. But the outcomes of this fiction are so steeped in realities that are already surrounding us, that the possibilities of Atwood's speculation become frighteningly plausible. The writing itself is beautiful and elegant. The characters are fully fledged psychological beings, that are not there to merely serve the plot. Their emotional burdens are believable and ring true. While The Handmaid's Tale has already cemented itself as not only Atwood's finest work, but as a seminal piece of modern speculative fiction, given a few more years Oryx & Crake deserves to catch up both in esteem and appreciation.
dijn737
The Mars Series
Kim Stanley Robinson
Also his Antartica and The Years of Rice and Salt. Ecologically sound, socialogically and psychologically fascinating. loved many of the recommendations - LeGuin, Foundation Series, Olaf Stapledon.
hammerct1
Hard science fiction mixed with psychedelic visuals. Both clear cut and incredibly hazy. The best.
jslater
Startide Rising
David Brin
David's Uplift series, at least the first three books, showcased both the audacious arrogance of humanity as a whole, but the inclusiveness of people working together in a community. While I feel the series devolved, Startide Rising captured the poetry of life that I hadn't found in science fiction until then, nor later.
Paul
Stone
Adam Roberts
Because it centres around a prisoner talking to a rock but the story he tells is amazing!
Gav Reads
Maul
Tricia Sullivan
no such thing as best SF novel as genre entirely fluid and changing and one generations best is the next's stoge (and we - generalized we - desperately need to learn to distinguish between what we like and what is good, and what we dislike and what is bad.) But Maul... brutal, challenging, unforgiving... Worth reading simply because it proves SF can shock, be relevant and make readers uncomfortable rather than comforting them. I can think of a dozen other books published in the last ten years as good as most things listed so far (but I'll spare you the soapbox)
JonCG
The Gap Series
Stephen Donaldson
An epic space opera. Politics, war and a believable alien menace, form the backdrop for characters carved from stone. Every arc deserves and demands your attention. Great entertainment. 5 books in the series but worth a mention.
thegapinto...
It's brilliant and funny and unforgetable.
Kat Warren
The Foreigner Series
C J Cherryh
This series of novels - now 12 of them published - explores alien/human interaction with an intensity I have not seen elsewhere in the genre. The writing has improved as the series progresses and while they may become repetitive in scenarios, each new book in the series throws new light on the humanoid but not human species that the hero has to understand to survive. Cherryh would be the author I would send to front any future meeting with an alien species.
stephenrb
Chasm City
Alastair Reynolds
A great world, loads of action and more plot twist than you can shake a stick at. Couldn't put it down.
 
Neuromancer
William Gibson
Everything from character names (Wintermute, Case, Lady 3Jane) to the way he only implies the momentous world events that have made the world what it is make Neuromancer a book you can't shake. Exactly one other novel has the staying power for me of Gibson's dystopic masterpiece - Infinite Jest.
iembalm
Neverness
David Zindell
It builds a world that entrances and saddens when the book comes to an end. And then gladdens when you are told there is a following three part sequel. And then saddens again because after this great start in writing SF, he follows a similar story line but in a fantasy series that does not measure up. I wish he would return to spaceships and discard magical amulets.
honey
Inverted World
Christopher Priest
Priest's Inverted World captivated me with its premise -- a city on wheels that has to keep moving to get away from a very strong gravitational field. It has steampunk, mathematical, physical, and sociological elements, just to name a few. It's a beautiful work on a thought experiment that poses a very intriguing question -- what if our planet isn't at all spherical as we perceive it to be?
KyusiReader
hyperion's cantos
Dan Simmons
SF often adress to some geek generation, adults who refuse to grow up totally but this one is for me the first modern sf to speak directly to the human being. Simmons create a entire universe with its own laws of physics and spirituality. This saga consist in four books, each of them the direct followers of the previous one even if some hundreds years separate the first cycle of the second. There is philosophy, space fights, ground fights, poetry, romance, hope and despair... I can't sum the story up because it will be like sum the ancient and the new testament up...But I can tell you you will not be desapointedif you appreciated Asimov's Foundation, you will love Simmon's Hyperion Cantos
Atropos
Options
Robert Sheckley
Sheckley beat Douglas Adams to the punch by adding satirical humour to SF. Options is a funny book, the story of a man journeying across a planet to find a part for his damaged spaceship, accompanied by a robot guide programmed for a different planet - the robot's desperation as events diverge from its expectations and it seeks to rationalise them are great fun. But the book also becomes a kind of postmodern commentary on the very art of writing fiction - as events get more surreal, like Alice in Wonderland, the author, like the robot, seems to lose control of events - even introducing a new hero to try to resolve the story. I find the book hilarious, as surreal as a Monty Python movie, and yet underpinned by a curious sadness and, yes, desperation. I've never read anything quite like it, and it cheers me up like nothing else, yet it's always laughter through tears. If it was by Flann O'Brien and called At Two Swim Birds it would already be hailed as a classic! Alas...
dowland
Ender's game
Orson Scott Card
Amazing fall into a world where ethics are all but forgotten for the greater good. The depth of the characters' psychology is impressive and the fate awaiting the hero could not let anyone untouched. The strongest part of this book is probably that there is no vilain. We understand the actions of everyone. We might have acted differently, or stood by watching and hope, but we cannot think them monsters. Even when they are harsh towards a little boy to the point of breaking is mind forever. Even when an entire civilization is wiped out of the universe. We get it.
Skilgannon
Well it started the discworld...what more do you need?
Manoknok
Encounter with Tiber
Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes
A book with one of the most poignant endings I've ever read, but also packed full of the technical detail and ideas that make for great hard SF. In the two parallel narratives we see a very human quest for the stars set against the story of the alien race struggling with its own very human problem, racism. The human story brings Aldrin's insights and knowledge to the fore, to the point that readers new to SF may find the technical bits hard going, but the alien story brings it all back down to earth, albeit on another planet. Wish I could write more about how well that ending works but that would spoil the whole thing - lose yourself in the details and ideas first and just let it crop up on you.
Stumpysheep
Earth
David Brin
Let's face it, David Brin hasn't got the best reputation as an SF author. The Postman will now be forever associated with Kevin Costner and the Uplift Saga, despite some moments of genius, manages to turn the entire (and long) final book into an anti-climax. But I'm recommending Earth as much for my personal connection with it as for the quality of writing. This is a book with Gaia theory at its core (along with a mini black hole) and some of the ideas are even more resonant now than when it was first published - for example the opening gambit that the poor nations of the world have got pissed off with capitalist bankers and nuked Switzerland. Although it's not without its flaws this book came along when I was discovering Gaia and environmentalism and so will forever have a place in my heart.
Stumpysheep
Transcendent
Stephen Baxter
Coalescent opened the Destiny's Children series with critical acclaim, but I'm nominating Transcendent for having one of the best opening lines of any book: "The girl from the future told me the sky is full of dying worlds".
Stumpysheep
The Drought
J.G.Ballard
For his evocative style of writing. His descriptions are in some sense other worldly in a way that draws the reader in and gives great depth to the estrangement the reader feels.It is a near future world that is thus utterly believable, that could, if mankind is not careful, happen to us.
JOL
Forever War
Joe Haldeman
Brilliant yarn but also a dark comment on the Vietnam experience. Turned me into a SF fan
Spotty
Fremder
Russell Hoban
This book is a masterpiece - it is a flawed masterpiece, with a lame ending that is quite unworthy of what goes before, but it is nonetheless a masterpiece for its presentation of: * Flicker drive (with a direct quotation from Hoban's The Medusa Frequency) * Pythia (cf. Oedipus) * The government building in the shape of an Aztec temple * The girl with whom Fremder falls into a relationship * Chopin in 2052 (or thereabouts) * Izzy and his sister and what they (and we) discover * The Fourth Galaxy (actually, Hoban tells me that he didn't mean 'galaxy', but who cares!?) * A vision of a crippled Earth, both from in the depths (when he goes to buy non-specific Whisky) and from up high But the best thing of these is the whole genesis of the flicker implant Any offers of an alternative ending from any reader...?
apsley88
Riddley Walker
Russell Hoban
It cuts to the core of what it means to be a human, wandering and wondering.
sheepshank
For its depiction of a future where the tories get their way.
Pickup
Zoe's War
John Scalzi
The Old Man's War series are my most lent SF books and Scalzi's writing, although darker, deserves the comparisons made to the great Douglas Adams. I could pick any of four books in the series but went for Zoe's War as Scalzi took on the brave task of re-writing the whole story from the perspective of the narrator's adopted daughter. The tightly written plots of the first three mean that there is very little left unexplained, but Scalzi somehow manages to make everything seem fresh. Douglas would surely approve.
Stumpysheep
We3
Grant Morrison
Not only is it a beautfiul book thanks to Frank Quietlys art but the way the animals communicate is extremly well done.
Bobbyskizza
The Man in the High Castle
Philip K Dick
Because in this book, nothing (and no one) is what it seems to be on the surface. And like the best of his books, Dick manages to hold together the stories of small personal lives with catastrophic upheaval.
Allez45
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Philip K Dick
It's way ahead of its time in predicting shared, virtual realities. It masterfully plays tricks with the reader over and over again until you just submit and laugh at how ingenious it is.
ChewZ
The Cyberiad
Stanislaw Lem
It is witty, funny, sweet and captivating, yet tells us, in the middle of all the fun and otherworldliness about ourselves, and our planet, our lives. You can read it at fifteen, and you can read it at fifty, with equal joy. A great book.
BirdArvid
pattern recognition
william gibson
His characters are always compelling and his writing, though sometimes difficult to follow is always well chosen. The story came together in a moving conclusion. I read it three times and would like to read it again. The next two in this series were good, too.
dora
Tiger, Tiger
Alfred Bester
As fresh and imaginative as the day it was written. The prose is crisp with some wonderful imagery. The anti-hero protagonist is one of the best characters in science fiction.
RossWarren
1984
Orwell
I read it when little and it provides a sci-fi sociology that is ever-present. I also liked the Asimov trilogy but it is far removed from recent science developments. I am reading the Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson which takes sci-fi to new heights.
 
Camp Concentration
Thomas M. Disch
Sheer show-boating audacity, from the punning title through to a first-person narrative that makes 'Flowers For Algeron' look like a school essay, this story of political prisoners deliberately infected with a terminal strain of syphilis makes more points than a syringe factory. Disch, who was also an acclaimed poet, was one of the finest writers in the field and he wasn't afraid to prove it.
Jim Steel
Use Of Weapons
Iain M Banks
Banks is wildly imaginative in all his books. Reading them I always feel a childlike sense of wonder at the breadth of imagination realised and a very adult sense of voyeurism at its strange but familiar moral seediness. Of the sci-fi books I've read, only Use Of Weapons actually makes me viscerally respond when I think back upon it: what feels like the lower reaches of my heart are choked by an unvocalised "f*ck".
whoeverunder
Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
Back when I was reading SF this book completely captured my imagination. There's something very real about its premise, that the military would take a child and make a killing machine out of him.
AngryPancho
Dune
Frank Herbert
Again, it's been a long time since I've read SF, but back when I did, I found it easy to become immersed in the series. Mr Herbert has a knack for making political machinations accessible to young people.
AngryPancho
2001: A Space Odyssey
Arthur C. Clarke
Its association with Stanley Kubrick's film (which is arguably the 20th century's greatest work of Art) makes Clarke's novel the one indispensible classic work of popular SF literature.
Pigasus Press
Reality Dysfunction
Peter F Hamilton
Easily my favourite book ... great characters ... great ideas - example affinity bonding - just loved it! This was recommended as someone else's favourite book ... read all of his books also enjoyed the nano flower and mispent youth - also recommend Saga of the Exiles by Julian May
porkpiemickjen
The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy
Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams was my introduction to science fiction. Through him I discovered Heinlein, Clarke and all the other Sci-Fi masters by seeking out books in the same section of the library as this silly book with the alien making a face. 30 years later he remains one of my favorite authors.
rjweeks70
The Man in the High Castle
Phlip K Dick
A scanner darkly
Philip Dick
Because is one of the most important novels of the XX century, not only in SF. A sort of post-apochalyptic "Voyage au bout de la nuit"...
aedo67
I, ROBOT
Isaac Asimov
A deceptively simple collection of short stories, but at the same time an epochal refutation of the old Frankenstein myth -- why wouldn't the creator of a sentient artificial man engineer it to avoid being destroyed by it? And what kind of world would it be with a race of human "masters" and robot "slaves" when the "slaves" are designed to obey the masters? What then would it mean to be human? Isn't that the ultimate question that all great science fiction asks? If that's the case, then I, ROBOT belongs on any list of the best works of science fiction ever written.
RBBernstein
Halting State
Charles Stross
Set in a not-too distant future Edinburgh and crossing genres with its Detective 'Who Done it', MMORPG story & Essay on human behaviour, this books shows a very strong reflection of todays world. Mr. Stross (or Charlie to those that know him), weaves these very different stories in a bewildering and yet strange engrossing narrative (which also includes some very wicked in-jokes to those in the know), to a conclusion at which feels satisfying but also deeply distrubing in in which it compels you to reread just to make absloutely sure that you have understood properly. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Fenland
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula Le Guin
Strange & Familiar; Action & Contemplation; Soft Science & Deep Interpersonal Relations; Genre Structure & Literary Language; From a Woman to Men
korchant
Black Man
Richard Morgan
Fast paced, unpleasant in places with good character development. A typical Morgan anti-hero in Carl Marsalis and weirdly resonant with me as I work with severely autistic young adults. The science appears believable, though I'm not the sort to check it against actual science facts. No daft spaceships, no Star Trek do-goodery, no amazing aliens used to escape plot twists. Just humans being their usual dysfunctional, looking out for number one, self.
Datters
They Rediscovery of Man
Cordwainer Smith
This is like no other fiction I have read. It is Romance literature, poetic and myth-making. The collection of loosely related stories tell of humanity's future, from a time just after WW2 through to AD 13,582. But we come at this history more through allegory, myth and legend, than expository fact. There are great technological leaps such as the Habermans (dead space captains), and planoforming ships with their pinlighting defences (a partnership between telepathically connected humans and cats) to help propel the history and still greater characters, such as Lord Jestocost, Lost C'Mell, Helen America and her love Mr Grey no-more. There is the unusual narrative style of the stories, the learn-ed word play and intriguing story titles (Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh!, Alpha Ralpha Boulevard). But most of all, when you finally put the book down, there is this haunting feeling that even though you have met so many and witnessed so much, you know you have only scratched the surface of this brilliantly realized universe.
LordDog