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[MikeyB]

No time to make a list, but Blindsight is definitely one of my favorites and it is available for free online in multiple formats under a creative commons license. It is possibly the most thought provoking and creepy sci fi i have read.

Two random others that have really stayed with me are Pohl's Gateway and Banks' The Algebraist.

 

[Ratrat]

Is Cryptonomicon science fiction?

Its historic fiction, silly.

Cryptonomicon (1999) – Locus SF Award winner, 2000;[31] Hugo and Clarke Awards nominee, 2000;[31] 2013 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award

 

[hendersonhank]

no order:

• The Book of the New Sun (series) - Gene Wolfe
• Mythago Wood - Robert Holdstock
• The Neverending Story - Michal Ende
• A Wizard of Earthsea (series) - Ursula K. LeGuin
• Lord Valentine's Castle - Robert Silverberg
• Ender's Game (series) - Orson Scott Card
• The Road - Cormac MacCarthy
• The Once & Future King - T.H. White
• Watership Down - Richard Adams (does this count?)
• Time of the Dark (series) - Barbara Hambly

 

[Machine]

Most of my favorites have already been covered:

Dune - Herbert
Uplift Saga - Brin
Galactic Center series - Benford
Foundation series - Asimov
Something by Clarke, probably Rendezvous with Rama but maybe Childhood's End
Something by Heinlein, I'm thinking the Moon is a Harsh Mistress since it held up better than Stranger in a Strange Land when I recently re-read them
Culture series - Banks
Ringworld - Niven
Hyperion Cantos - Simmons
Neuromancer - Gibson
Snow Crash - Stephenson

I'd also like to spotlight some that I really like that probably won't be mentioned:
Grass by Sheri Tepper
A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
On My Way to Paradise by Dave Wolverton
When HARLIE Was One by David Gerrold
Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling

 

[Chocolate & Vanilla]

I read so many sci-fi and fantasy books over the years this is quite hard. I've condensed my list into series where applicable rather than individual books.

1. Discworld Series - Pratchett's 41 books of pure brilliance
2. Commonwealth Saga - Peter Hamilton
3. Hitchhikers Guide Series - Douglas Adams
4. Lord of The Rings - Tolkien
5. Void Trilogy - Peter Hamilton
6. Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss (hurry up with number three dammit)
7. Great North Road - Peter Hamilton
8. The Hobbit - Tolkien
9. Enchantress Series - James Maxwell
10. The Bromeliad - Pratchett
10.Mindstar Rising - Peter Hamilton (I already have 10 but this is a relatively unknown Cyberpunk gem)


I like Peter Hamilton.

Bonus: Just started reading the Malazan series. Only part way through the first book but I have a good feeling this series will make the list when I'm done.

 

[capitalCORN]

I don't think anyone said the Time Quintet so I'll go with that.

 

[Violet_0]

not sure, #1 would be:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/Neuromancer_(Book).jpg

this is where I stand as well

 

[Baconsaurus Rex]

I'm looking for a new fantasy series after reading the entire Witcher series last year. I need a new series to dive into. I see Malazan getting mentioned a lot, but it looks kinda daunting.

 

[Cosmic Schwung]

In no particular order...

The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Hyperion Cantos - Dan Simmons
The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
Forever War - Joe Haldeman
A Scanner Darkly - Phillip K Dick
Cugel's Saga - Jack Vance
The Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb
His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman

 

[Siegcram]

Not ranked (I hate ranking books).

Ubik - Philip K. Dick
Night Watch - Sergei Lukyanenko
Imperial Radch trilogy - Ann Leckie
Pages of Pain - Troy Denning
The Stand - Stephen King
The City of Dreaming Books - Walter Moers
1984 - George Orwell
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Good Omens - Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett
The Worm Ouroboros - E.R. Eddison

I don't read as much sci-fi as I'd like, so this thread is greatly appreciated.

 

[mu cephei]

Top eight series/ top eight individual books in vague order:

Farseer/ Elderlings (The Golden Fool) - Robin Hobb
A Song of Ice and Fire (A Storm of Swords) - George R. R. Martin
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (The Power that Preserves) - Stephen Donaldson
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
The Culture books (The Player of Games) - Iain M. Banks
Malazan Book of the Fallen (House of Chains) - Steven Erikson
Long Price Quartet (An Autumn War) - Daniel Abraham
The Gap series (Forbidden Knowledge) - Stephen Donaldson

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand - Samuel Delany
The Dispossessed - Ursula Le Guin
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Inverted World - Christopher Priest
Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card
The Scar - China Mieville

I've missed off some great authors - Neal Stephenson, Philip K. Dick, Lois McMaster Bujold, Dan Simmons, etc - as although their work is fab, I don't quite love any individual book enough. I've probably forgotten a few I might have listed, as well.

Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany is by far my favorite sci-fi novel.

yup, it is totally amazing. It needs more love.

 

[Megalosaro]

I doesn't think the Forever war was that great. The time stuff was great, but the war pay was weak

 

[Litan]

I doesn't think the Forever war was that great. The time stuff was great, but the war pay was weak

Nonsense. One of my favorite sci fi books ever.
I wish we got more military sci fi in media.

 

[andythinkpad]

How do you combine sci-fi and fantasy into 1 thread, that's gross.

My top 10 sci-fi novels

Diamond Age - Stephenson
Neuromancer - Gibson
Anathem - Stephenson
Citizen of the Galaxy - Heilein
Mysterious Island - Jules Verne
Peripheral - Gibson
Player of the Game - Banks
Ring World - Nivens (only the first one)
Dune Trilogy - Herbert (just pretend they are 1 book)
Accidential Time Machine - Haldeman

(I just listen to the Anathem again 2 times in a row this week, I wouldn't mind put it on number 1. We all know Stephenson didn't write an ending for Diamond Age.)

 

[DemWalls]

In no particular order (although The First Law is probably my favourite fantasy work):

- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (let's say it's Sci-Fi)
- The First Law by Joe Abercrombie
- The Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker
- Gormenghast by Peake
- The Magicians by Lev Grossman
- Tales of the Ketty Jay by Chris Wooding
- Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
- Baudolino by Umberto Eco (it's basically fantasy)
- Bas-Lag by China Miéville

Been reading the Shattered Sea trilogy lately, after a not so great start it may actually enter this list). I didn't care too much for other "masterpieces" such as LotR or Kingkiller, although I didn't dislike them.

 

[timetokill]

4. Kovacs Trilogy, Richard K. Morgan (Vibrant, slick, and brutal with a true revolutionary spirit.)

I read Altered Carbon and enjoyed it. Are the other two just as good?

 

[Fancy Clown]

I'm realizing I haven't read a whole ton of sci-if/fantasty stuff in my life, and a lot of what I have read I wouldn't put in a top 10. Slaughterhouse Five is my number 1 though.

 

[Elandyll]

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
Moorcock's Stormbringer
Donaldson's:
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever
The 2nd Chronicle of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever
The Gap Series
Mordant's Need
Dick's Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep (aka Blade Runner) & Ubik
Herbert's Dune
Asimov's Robot series (my fav being Robots of Dawn) & Foundation
King's IT & The Stand
AE Van Vogt Slan & Empire of the Atom (Null A is a tad too weird for me)
Gibson's Neuromancer
Clarke's Rendez Vous with Rama
Pohl's Gateway series


Yes, I am a pre 2000 Donaldson fanboy. I think he veered a bit too hard in the obscure and verbose with the 3rd Chronicle, but his earlier stuff is absolute top tier imo (besides a really weird and somewhat disturbing tendancy to use rape as a plot device).

 

[Vyrance]

Science Fiction:

Commonwealth Saga & Void Trilogy - Peter F. Hamilton
The Night's Dawn - Peter F. Hamilton
Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds
Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Foundation - Isaac Asimov
Old Man's War - John Scalzi
The Culture - Iain M. Banks
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman

Fantasy:

Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
A Song of Ice and Fire - George R.R. Martin (unfinished)
Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson (unfinished)
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Legend of Drizzt - R.A. Salvatore
Dragonlance series - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

These are the ones I'm fond of. Still have a lot of other reading to do though!

 

[willow ve]

Glad to see Peter F Hamilton and Alastair Reynolds making the lists in more recent posts.

I've read every book Hamilton has published and he's the only author I preorder without knowing a single bit about the next book. If anyone is looking for expansive space opera - look here.

1. All books (multiple series and trilogies set in the same universe) - Peter F Hamilton
2. Revelation Space (series) - Alastair Reynolds
3. The Space Trilogy - CS Lewis

 

[Mumei]

I got Hyperion, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, The Lies of Locke Lamora, and Vernor Vinge's Marooned In Realtime in my To Read folder

Is Gene Wolfe relatively unknown? I rarely see him mentioned in threads like this, but his works seem to be very highly regarded

He was featured in an article in the New Yorker a few years ago!:

Wolfe has published more than twenty-five novels and more than fifty stories, and has won some of science fiction and fantasy’s most prestigious awards. But he has rarely, if ever, been considered fully within the larger context of literature. His books contain all of the nasty genre tropes—space travel, robots, even dragons—and he hasn’t crossed into the mainstream on the strength of a TV or movie adaptation. Wolfe himself sees the trappings of science fiction and fantasy, the spaceships and so on, as simply “a sketchy outline of the things that can be done.” But even within fantasy fandom, Wolfe’s work presents difficulties. His science fiction is neither operatic nor scientifically accurate; his fantasy works are not full of clanging swords and wizardly knowledge. But ask science-fiction or fantasy authors about Gene Wolfe and they are likely to cite him as a giant in their field. Ursula K. Le Guin once called Wolfe “our Melville.”

He's not especially well-known among the broader public, but he is enormously respected by his peers.

For you, Queen of Angels. It's the story of a poet in a society where everyone is required to receive therapy. He uses neurotechnology to go strange places in his brain, and terrible things happen. It features a police officer with orca skin, a device called a hellcrown used by puritan terrorists, and a healthy dose of syncretic voodoo/catholicism.

The White Plague is about a guy whose wife and daughter are killed by a terrorist bomb, so he decides that no one should have a wife or daughter and begins spreading a gene-tailored plague that only kills women. The world goes batshit.

... It figures that you would suggest a novel that is not available for me to order a new copy directly from Amazon (that other way doesn't count) and that the library doesn't have.

The Sparrow was very good. That one was a surprise for me as I picked it up on a whim and wasn't expecting to read much into it. Ended up getting hooked from like page 1.

Lots of other good books on your list as well. I loved The Curse Of The Chalion but still haven't gotten around to reading Paladin Of Souls unfortunately

I read The Sparrow because one of the hosts on a now-defunct—— book podcast (BOTNS) said quite a few times that it was her favorite book. It's not mine, but I obviously wasn't disappointed by it.

Does The Road count? God I love that book, it's beautifully written.

"What counts" is an interesting question here, really.

 

[MrOogieBoogie]

I read so many sci-fi and fantasy books over the years this is quite hard. I've condensed my list into series where applicable rather than individual books.

1. Discworld Series - Pratchett's 41 books of pure brilliance
2. Commonwealth Saga - Peter Hamilton
3. Hitchhikers Guide Series - Douglas Adams
4. Lord of The Rings - Tolkien
5. Void Trilogy - Peter Hamilton
6. Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss (hurry up with number three dammit)
7. Great North Road - Peter Hamilton
8. The Hobbit - Tolkien
9. Enchantress Series - James Maxwell
10. The Bromeliad - Pratchett
10.Mindstar Rising - Peter Hamilton (I already have 10 but this is a relatively unknown Cyberpunk gem)


I like Peter Hamilton.

Bonus: Just started reading the Malazan series. Only part way through the first book but I have a good feeling this series will make the list when I'm done.

Keep in mind, book two was written nearly a decade after and it shows. Big time. I was seriously shocked by how much better written the series is after GotM. Almost like two different authors.

I really need to check out the Culture series. It's got a lot of love here.

 

[Hurricane_Chris]

2. Blindsight - Peter Watts

Did you read Echopraxia? A ton of people that read the first book seem to have not picked up the second book in the series. If you have not, it is awesome.

 

[bengraven]

Subscribing.

I'm always up for a book recommendation and some of you have similar tastes as me but some interesting choices I haven't read.

 

[Incandenza]

Ordering things is hard so here's 10:

A Song of Ice and Fire (GRRM)
Mistborn (Brandon Sanderson)
The Dark Tower (Stephen King)
The Lions of Al-Rassan (Guy Gavriel Kay)
The First Law (Joe Abercrombie)
Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
The Stand (Stephen King)
Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer)
The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

If I could include just the Scholar's tale from Hyperion it would probably be on the list too. Unfortunately I didn't care for most of the rest of that book.

 

[StrongBelwas]

The wizard and glass (book 4 of the dark tower series) might just be my favourite fantasy book I've read. The mix of fantasy and western is just so damn good.

Also does Battle Royale count as Sci fi? I mean it's set in the future albeit not very distant future. That's also right up there for me.

 

[Zona]

And you listed entire series, too! Of your list, I haven't read any entries from:

Great Sky River Series -- Gregory Benford
Mars Trilogy - Kim Stanley Robinson
The White Plague - Frank Herbert
Ringworld Series -- Larry Niven
Years of Rice and Salt -- Kim Stanley Robinson
Manifold Trilogy -- Stephen Baxter
Diaspora - Greg Egan
Kiln People -- David Brin
Queen of Angels - Greg Bear
Culture Series - Iain M Banks

Clearly someone has been derelict in their evangelistic responsibilities.

I...
Rectify this situation immediately. The Mars Trilogy especially I can see you loving based on your recommendations that I've read. For The Culture I generally advise reading book 2, book 1, and book 3 in that order, then following the publishing order.

 

[Mumei]

I...
Rectify this situation immediately. The Mars Trilogy especially I can see you loving based on your recommendations that I've read. For The Culture I generally advise reading book 2, book 1, and book 3 in that order, then following the publishing order.

That is a lot of rectifying you're asking me to do!

 

[HStallion]

Anything by Chuck Tingle

 

[Zona]

That is a lot of rectifying you're asking me to do!

Come now, at your apparent reading speed it a long weekend at most.

I joke, I joke. I would heartily recommend reading the first book of the bolded though*. The Mars Trilogy especially is a combination of Hard SciFi with a huge focus on characters that you don't often get.







*Second in the case of The Culture

 

[Mumei]

Come now, at your apparent reading speed it a long weekend at most.

I joke, I joke. I would heartily recommend reading the first book of the bolded though*. The Mars Trilogy especially is a combination of Hard SciFi with a huge focus on characters that you don't often get.







*Second in the case of The Culture

I've been pretty bad this year; I'm averaging maybe... 50 pages a day? :x

Then again, genre fiction as a rule reads much faster for me than other kinds of books.

 

[Pau]

Limiting it to only one work per author.

1. Nightwatch by Terry Pratchett
2. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
3. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
4. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
5. The Spellcoats by Diana Wynne Jones
6. Paladin of Souls Lois McMaster Bujold
7. Sabriel by Garth Nix
8. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

The last two slots I'm iffy about. Maybe Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars? I think 90% of the science fiction I love is written by Le Guin to be honest.

 

[rackham]

Ender's Game and the saga surrounding it

 

[Mumei]

Pau, you should read Riddle-Master.

Ender's Game and the saga surrounding it

I loved Ender's Game, and Speaker for the Dead particularly, in high school. I haven't read them since then, and I'm not sure I could give them a fair reading anymore.

I didn't really get Xenocide or Children of the Mind, though. Maybe I was too young or too dumb. Or maybe they were dumb.

 

[Pau]

Pau, you should read Riddle-Master.

I did! It'd be in my top 20.

 

[Mumei]

I did! It'd be in my top 20.

City of Saints and Madmen?

 

[besada]

... It figures that you would suggest a novel that is not available for me to order a new copy directly from Amazon (that other way doesn't count) and that the library doesn't have.

If I hadn't just sold my entire library, I'd send you my copy. It's got a bitchin cover. The library should be ashamed of itself, btw. Tell them I said so.

 

[JeTmAn81]

Speaker for the Dead is far and away my favourite.

I love that one, actually prefer it to Ender's Game which is also one of my favorites.

 

[Mumei]

If I hadn't just sold my entire library, I'd send you my copy. It's got a bitchin cover. The library should be ashamed of itself, btw. Tell them I said so.

I am more concerned that they no longer have a copy of Vendler's The Odes of John Keats! I wanted to reference it today while I was there and it was no longer listed in the system.

 

[sans_pants]

best:
the stars my destination
the demolished man
more than human
chocky
hard to be a god
roadside picnic
solaris
the diamond age
lord of light
the forever war

also good:
jurassic park, rendezvous with rama, 2001, the end of eternity, enders game, the mote in gods eye, waystation, the running man, ringworld 1, sprawl trilogy, foundation, caves of steel

 

[Dan]

Top 10 is so damn hard...

But I did want to mention some grander space sci-fi stuff that I never see mentioned. Looks like they're OOP, but they're available as ebooks. It's been years, but I really enjoyed them back then.

Evergence Trilogy by Sean Williams & Shane Dix
* The Prodigal Sun
* The Dying Light
* A Dark Imbalance

In the far future, humanity has colonized the outermost reaches of the galaxy,
and society has evolved into a hierarchy of castes. From the godlike High to the barely sentient Low, and in between are the mundanes, both Pristine and Exotic. Empires have risen and fallen, and the Dato Bloc has just seceded from the Commonwealth of Empires...

Morgan Roche is a commander in the intelligence arm of the Commonwealth of Empires. Her mission is to escort the artificial intelligence unit known simply as "The Box" to her superiors. But en route, her ship is attacked by Dato Bloc warships, forcing Roche to escape to the surface of the prison planet Sciacca's World with the help of Adoni Cane -
a genetically enhanced warrior whose past is a mystery even to him.

Marooned and hunted, Roche must protect "The Box" at all costs. But what about Cane?
Who created him and why? The answers may be the salvation of the human race - or its damnation...

Orphans Trilogy by Sean Williams & Shane Dix
* Echoes of Earth
* Orphans of Earth
* Heirs of Earth

In the early 22nd century, humans have shed their bodies to travel through space. Produced through nanotechnology, their electronic reproductions, known as engrams, have been sent on fact-finding missions throughout the known universe - searching for signs of alien life...

As the engram crew of a survey ship watches, ten orbital towers are constructed around an uninhabited planet's equator - by unidentifiable, spindle-shaped entities. Then, without any attempt at communication, the spindles withdraw. Cautiously exploring the towers, Peter Alander finds what appear to be gifts from a technologically-advanced race, including a faster-than-light ship. But when Alander pilots the ship back to Earth with news of the unprecedented event, he may be giving humanity a gift it can't afford to accept...

 

[massoluk]

Disclaimer: list not indicative of quality, just how much the books are dear to my life

1. The Wheel of Time. Each release is a major event to me. Years of following the characters on their adventure. This is the crack for me.

2. Belgariad/Mallorean - just a bliss, good feel book

3. Farseers/Fitz and Fool by Robin Hobbs

4. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

5. Mistborns

6. Song of Ice and Fire

7. Dragon Crown War

8. Soldier Son Trilogy

9. Tales of Alvin Maker ... Yes, Orson Scott Card before I realized he was an asshole

10. Salvatore's Forgotten Realm books

 

[Pau]

City of Saints and Madmen?

I've never read anything by Jeff VanderMeer. I'll add it to my to-read-list!

 

[Monocle]

That is a lot of rectifying you're asking me to do!

You've gotta get into the Culture series. It's wonderful.

 

[EGM1966]

too painful to create a list of ten. Too many classics I love.

But as an attempt taking those I go back to the most:

A Scanner Darkly - PKD
Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
Eon - Greg Bear
Childhood's End - Arthur C Clarke
Eye of the Queen - Philip Mann
Earth Abides - George R Stewart
Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M Miller
Fifth ahead of Cerberus - Gene Wolfe
Neuromancer - William Gibson

There's some hugely influential favourites missing from that list though.

 

[Aselith]

Put my favorite books in the series although some are obviously part of a larger series that kind of runs into one.

Magician - Raymond E Feist
1984 - George Orwell
Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake
Storm of Swords - George RR Martin
Juxtaposition - Piers Anthony
Dragon Wing - Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Spook Country - William Gibson
Salamandastron - Brian Jaqcues
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan

 

[Timeaisis]

In absolutely no order:

Lord of the Rings
Slaughterhouse-Five
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Stranger in a Strange Land
Farenheit 451
Childhood's End
Out of the Silent Planet
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Dune
1984

 

[Timbuktu]

I would add Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go as one of my favourite sci fi novels by a not typically sci fi writer.

 

[Mossybrew]

No time to make a list, but Blindsight is definitely one of my favorites and it is available for free online in multiple formats under a creative commons license. It is possibly the most thought provoking and creepy sci fi i have read.

No doubt, Blindsight belongs on any top ten sci-fi list. Echopraxia is also great.

 

[Mumei]

You've gotta get into the Culture series. It's wonderful.

I checked out the second book from the library and bought the first and third (and quite a few other suggestions, too). I have also been told that Consider Phlebas is terribad, while Player of Games is a good contender for an all-time list. I'm looking forward to seeing if I feel there's that much of a quality whiplash.