listy list: 50 SF novels everyone should read

[the_siobhan]

Stolen from inulro

Bolded the ones I've read, struck out the ones I hated/didn't finish.

Ubik, Philip K. Dick
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
The Lord of the Rings trilogy [sic], J.R.R. Tolkien
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Gormenghast series, Mervyn Peake - (I managed to rescue one of these from Fiona's so I'll be correcting this situation shortly)
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
Kindred, Octavia Butler
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny - (Also grabbed a ton of Zelazny books from Fiona, although I didn't have time to look at the titles so I don't know if this one was included.)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
The City & The City, China Miéville - (Not yet but we have it here.)
The Once and Future King, T.H. White
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Zone One, Colson Whitehead
The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling - (Tried the first one. Couldn't get through it.)
The Time Quartet, Madeleine L’Engle
The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
The Female Man, Joanna Russ
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne - (Tried this when I was a teenager and couldn't finish it. I still have it here so I will give it another go.)
Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson
Solaris, Stanislaw Lem - (I'm actually not sure about this one. I know I have some of his books here, but I don't think I've read this one.)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Dune Chronicles, Frank Herbert
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Neuromancer, William Gibson
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
The Foundation series, Isaac Asimov
Discworld, Terry Pratchett - (Not all of them but Axel has the whole series so I'll get to most of them eventually. Except for the Rincewind ones. I hate those.)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Among Others, Jo Walton
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
The Drowned World, J.G. Ballard
Witch World, Andre Norton
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Little, Big, John Crowley
The Dragonriders of Pern series, Anne McCaffrey
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricia C. Wrede
The Castle trilogy, Diana Wynne Jones
The Giver, Lois Lowry

Every time I see lists like this I'm all what the hell? Where is Iain M Banks? And James Tiptree? The book Sheep Look Up should be on there. (In fact, everybody stop what you are doing and go read it, right now.) And if Harry Potter gets to be on there then so should Good Omens.

Could have been worse, I guess. At least Sookie Stackhouse isn't on there.

Comments

[greylock]

Every time I see lists like this I'm all what the hell? Where is Iain M Banks? And James Tiptree?

Where's the list originally from?
There's a few names here I haven't heard of, so I assume it's some person's list.

Also, Little, Big? I hated that book.

Also, also, Nine Princes In Amber gets included as a singular novel? WTF?

[the_siobhan]

No idea where the list is from, I just scooped it from LJ.

Is Nine Princes a series? A lot of them are.

Come to think of it, I'm surprised Wheel of Time isn't in there.

[greylock]

The Amber books are.
10 books, the first five are considered "essential",