I'm trying to read the top Sci-fi books and I am well along in the quest. When one does a web search, there are a number of lists of "Top 100" Sci-fi books. Some include Fantasy, but after the top ten or so, they frequently list the same books in the same order.

As far as I can tell, Sci-fi and Fantasy differ in that Fantasy involves magic. I went through a Fantasy phase a number of years ago so I'm not interested in Fantasy this time around.

I'd like your opinion of, say, the top five Sci-fi books you have read.

Thanks in advance.

Synnen

Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card (and the rest of those books, sans "Xenocide")
Tuff Voyaging, by George R. R. Martin
The "Otherland" books by Tad Williams
Childhood's End--I THINK this is by Arthur Clarke, but not sure on that---I read it a while back.
"the Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula LeGuin has always been a favorite of mine as well.

vingogly

Here is a good top 100 list. Although I'd disagree with some of the choices, it's a good starting point. It's missing some very significant figures: for example, Olaf Stapledon and Cordwainer Smith in the older category, China Mieville and John Wright in the newer. But no top 100 list will be perfect.

There's no hard & fast dividing line between fantasy and science fiction. There's fantasy that doesn't involve magic, and science fiction that does. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a burst of SF works that focused on psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Ursula LeGuin's works would be an example of this. Recently, there's been a rebirth of "hard" science fiction. There have always been a lot of twists & turns & reinventings in the genre.

I've been reading SF since circa 1953, so it's virtually impossible for me to give my top five. But if you twist my arm, here's a stab at it (well, I couldn't get it under eight, eleven if you count all volumes by Wolfe separately): Gene Wolfe's four-volume "Urth of the New Sun" series; William Gibson's "Neuromancer"; Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris"; Philip K. D's (the censoring software wont let me spell out his last name, see the above website for his full name) "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch"; Ursula LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness"; J. G. Ballard's "The Crystal World"; China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station", John Crowley's "Engine Summer". Anything written by these authors is worth reading; most are not what you'd call "hard" SF. I choose them because of either the quality of their writing and ideas, or because of the influence of their work on the genre. If I had to choose volumes to take to a desert island, these would be it.

HistorianChick

Thank you for bringing up this genre of books. I've always wanted to read at least one Science Fiction book, but I am completely clueless as to which one to pick up.

Actually, I'm rather confused as to the whole "what is science fiction?" question, too!

If you could recommend one, rodandy12, from your list, what would it be??

rodandy12

Wow. Tough question. Depends a great deal on who you are. There are a great number of sub-genres. I'll give you a few.

For classic Sci-fi the names are Azimov, Heinlein and Clark. Azimov wrote the Foundation trilogy in the late '40s/early '50s and added to it in the '80s. Heinlein wrote the '60s cult classic "Stranger in a Strange Land", "Starship Troopers" (don't think about the movie...it had almost no relationship to the book) and my personal favorite "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."

Another genre is "cataclysmic world destruction." Post WWII saw many of these and most people attribute the rise of nuclear weapons with the creation of this genre. In my opinion, the best of the bunch is "Earth Abides", but I'm sure others would have different opinions. A quicker read is "Day of the Triffids."

Some from the Hard Science genre are Asimov's "The Gods Themselves", Pohl's "Gateway" and maybe "Ringworld", but you could also put it into the next category. (These books are most appealing to those with some background in physics, but they are very good stories if you know nothing about it.)

Tongue in cheek Sci-fi would be anything by Douglas Adams or something like "Cat's Cradle" by Vonnegut.

Maybe the most fun genre is "interesting aliens." Niven wrote Ringworld and he does some of the best non-human species in all of Sci-fi. To get the feel with a short read that ought to be considered the prequel to Ringworld, try "The Protector." Another favorite is "A Fire Upon the Deep", but it is much longer.

Then there is time travel. Any number of these, but a good contemporary book is "The Time Traveler's Wife." It is a good read whether you like Sci-fi or not.

Yet another is what I call fractured religion for lack of a better title. Stories about races or non-human lifeforms with radically different belief systems or earth-based religions under stressful circumstances. My favorite is "A Canticle for Lebowitz."

The newest genre is Cyberpunk. "Neuromancer" and "Snowcrash" are the best of these. Think of this genre as hackers imagining what computers and networks will be like in 50-100 years.

There are probably others. Often, an author takes what would be a regular situation and changes something fundamental about it. The idea is to tell a story about individuals reacting to what might seem an impossible situation. PKD, as mentioned by vingogly above, wrote a book about WWII ending with America losing..."The Man in the High Castle" and it is also a classic, although I personally don't enjoy PKD as much as others seem to.

I guess you are realizing that I can't do this easily. If pressed, I suppose I'd have to go with "Dune." It is a great story about a complex set of interlocking groups of humans on a tough world. It is almost always in the top five on all the Sci-fi lists.

HistorianChick

Ooo... Time Traveler's Wife. I read that and liked it.

I enjoy time travel stories - movies, books, etc.

Dune, huh? May try that one. Thanks a bunch!

Synnen

Word of warning about Dune---if you REALLY like the first book, stop after the second book.

After that it gets....pedantic.

Another set of books I'd recommend, but always forget falls into sci-fi is the Valentine books by E. E. Knight. Post-apocalypse type books, with a good plot and characters, makes for an interesting read.

I primarily read fantasy more than sci-fi---but both genres overlap so much that I've read several of rodandy's recommendations, and have added the others to my list to get

rodandy12

Absolutely agree about Dune. Other series aren't so bad. Examples: The Ender Wiggin Saga, Annals of the Hechee (sp?), The Foundation series, The Ringworld series etc.

vingogly

This has been optioned for a movie, I think.


J.G. Ballard's earlier books like the one I mentioned are examples of this.


A real classic in this subgenre is "The Cyberiad", by Stanislaw Lem.


"The Mote in God's Eye" by Niven & Pournelle is worth a read. There's also the subgenre of incomprehensible aliens - see Lem & many others.


If you like this sort of thing, I recommend "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell. Also optioned for a movie, but not much progress in that direction - Russell says: "It's not a movie until the cinematographer is on the set eating a breakfast burrito."


And verily, Cyberpunk begat Steampunk which is probably the very newest subgenre ... basically, Cyberpunk sensibility set in a Victorian alternate-universe ... K.W. Jeter coined the term, Gibson & Sterling's "Difference Engine" and China Mieville's works would be examples of Steampunk (though Mieville inhabits a very strange place indeed, where Steampunk meets Marxism and Lovecraftian horror at the border of Fantasy).


Also optioned for a movie. PKD is someone to be reckoned with - can't say I enjoy him that much but he has had a huge influence on the genre.


There's no way I could pick just one.

Vasily

aokai

I don't read much science fiction, but I would have to my top four are...

The moon is a harsh mistress by Robert Heinlein
The Handmaids Tale by Margret Atwood
1984 by George Orwell
Battlefield earth by L. Ron Hubbard