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- 1. Arthur C. Clarke. Childhood's
End
- Written in the early 1950s, this acclaimed novel of The Overlords
and their reign on Earth established Clarke as a master science
fiction writer.
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- 2. Isaac Asimov. The
Foundation Trilogy
- Tells the futuristic story of galactic history in the time
between the two empires.
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- 3. Frank Herbert. Dune
- Set on the
desert planet Arrakis begins the story of a great family's plan
to bring to fruition an unattainable dream.
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- 4. Philip K. Dick. The
Man in the High Castle
- It's America
in 1962--where slavery is legal and the few surviving Jews hide
anxiously under assumed names. All because some twenty years earlier
America lost a war--and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany
and Japan.
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- 5. Robert A. Heinlein. Starship
Troopers
- A recruit
of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the universe--and
into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankind's
most frightening enemy.
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- 6. Philip K. Dick. Valis
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- 7. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Frankenstein
- A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies
develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and
hate his creator. Includes illustrated notes throughout the text
explaining the historical background of the story.
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- 8. Frederik Pohl. Gateway
- The first
book of the Heechee saga. Gateway opens on all the wealth of the
Universe--and on reaches of unimaginable horror. The humans who
rode the alien Heechee spacecraft stored on the planetoid couldn't
know whether the trip would make them millionaires or corpses!
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- 9. Frederik Pohl. Space Merchants
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- 10. George R. Stewart. Earth Abides
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- 11. C.J. Cherryh. Cuckoo's
Egg
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- 12. James White. Star Surgeon
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- 13. Philip K. Dick. The
Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
- In the not too distant future, godlike--or perhaps Satanic--takeover
artists and corporate psychics wage marketing battles for the
human soul in this wildly disorienting funhouse of a novel.
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- 14. A. A. Attanasio. Radix
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- 15. Arthur C. Clarke. 2001:
A Space Odyssey
- Presents a science fiction allegory about humanity's exploration
of the universe and the universe's reaction to humanity.
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- 16. Larry Niven. Ringworld
- A new place
is being built, a world of huge dimensions, encompassing millions
of miles, stronger than any planet before it. There is gravity,
and with high walls and its proximity to the sun, a livable new
planet that is three million times the area of the Earth can be
formed. We can start again!
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- 17. James Blish. A
Case of Conscience
- Father Ruiz-Sanchez
was a dedicated man--a priest who was also a scientist, and a
scientist who was also a human being. He found no insoluble conflicts
in his beliefs or his ethics until he was sent to Lithia. Father
Ruiz-Sanchez was then torn in a struggle between the teachings
of his faith, the teachings of his science, and the inner promptings
of his humanity. There was only one solution. He had to accept
an ancient and unforgivable heresy--and in accepting that heresy,
he risked the futures of both worlds!
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- 18. Olaf Stapledon. Last and First Man
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- 19. John Wyndham. The
Day of the Triffids
- The balance of power between man and the plant kingdom shifts
and suddenly the world is dominated by monstrous stinging plants
that are capable of walking and communicating.
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- 20. Clifford D. Simak. Way
Station
- A novel of
a simple farmer who bridged the gap between humanity and the stars.
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- 21. Theodore Sturgeon. More
Than Human
- A group of remarkable social outcasts band together for survival
and discover their combined powers renders them superhuman.
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- 22. E.E. "Doc" Smith. Gray
Lensman
- "Lensman" is considered by many sf heads to be the greatest
of the space operas and clearly a source for such successors as
Star Trek and Star Wars.
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- 23. Isaac Asimov. The
Gods Themselves
- In the twenty-second
century, Earth obtains limitless, free energy from an alien source.
But the process will eventually lead to the destruction of Earth.
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- 24. Ursula K. Le Guin. The
Left Hand of Darkness
- The story
of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants
can change their gender.
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- 25. Michael Moorcock. Behold the Man
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- 26. Olaf Stapledon. Star Maker
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- 27. H. G. Wells. The
War of the Worlds
- As life on Mars becomes impossible, Martians and their terrifying
machines invade the earth.
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- 28. Jules Verne. 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea
- Retells the adventures of a French professor and his two companions
as they sail above and below the world's oceans as prisoners on
the fabulous electric submarine of the deranged Captain Nemo.
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- 29. Marion Zimmer Bradley. Heritage
of Hastur
- Tells the complex and compelling tale of the early life of
Regis Hastur, Darkover's greatest monarch. It also spins the terrifying
and heartbreaking story of those who sought to control the deadly
Sharra Matrix, and of how Lew Alton met and lost his greatest
love, Marjorie Scott.
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- 30. H. G. Wells. The
Time Machine
- A time traveler seeks a better world in the future, only to
discover that the human race has turned upon itself in a primal
display of horror.
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- 31. Alfred Bester. The
Stars My Destination
- In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future
in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought,
where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect
themselves with radioactive hit men--and where an inarticulate
outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive.
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- 32. A. E. Van Vogt. Slan
- The story of a mutant boy who must flee the persecution of
normal humans in order to face his real destiny, it is a story
that continues to appeal to science fiction fans of all generations.
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- 33. William Gibson. Neuromancer
- Case was the
best interface cowboy who ever ran in earth's computer matrix.
Then he doublecrossed the wrong people...
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- 34. Orson Scott Card. Ender's
Game
- Ender's Game
is the story of Ender Wiggin, a boy genetically engineered to
be a superior military mind, and bred to win Earth's long war
with an alien insectoid race by completely destroying their homeworld.
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- 35. C. S. Friedman. In Conquest Born
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- 36. Roger Zelazny. Lord
of Light
- Long after
the death of Earth, a band of men on a colony planet has gained
control of technology and has given itself immortality. There
is only one who dares oppose them: Mahasamatman, Binder of Demons
and Lord of Light.
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- 37. Greg Bear. Eon
- When
an enormous asteroid enters the Earth's orbit, the remains of
a vanished human civilization are discovered within that reveal
the asteroid's futuristic origins and predict a catastrophic immient
Earth war.
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- 38. Anne McCaffrey. Dragonflight
- To the nobles who live in Benden Weyr, Lessa is nothing but
a ragged kitchen girl. Now the time has come for Lessa to take
back her stolen birthright. But everything changes when she meets
a queen dragon. The bond they share will protect them when, for
the first time in centuries, Lessa's world is threatened by Thread,
which falls like rain and destroys everything it touches. Dragons
and their Riders once protected the planet from Thread, but there
are very few of them left these days. Now brave Lessa must risk
her life, and the life of her beloved dragon, to save her beautiful
world.
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- 39. Jules Verne. Journey
to the Center of the Earth
- A professor and his nephew reach the very core of the earth
by entering an extinct volcano in Iceland.
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- 40. Robert A. Heinlein. Stranger
in a Strange Land
- A Mars-born
earthling arrives on this planet for the first time as an adult,
and the sensation he creates teaches Earth some unforgettable
lessons.
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- 41. Gregory Benford. Cosm
- On an otherwise ordinary day not long from now, inside a massive
installation of ultra-high-energy scientific equipment, something
goes wrong with a brilliant young physicist's most ambitious experiment.
But this is not a calamity. It will soon be seen as one of the
most significant breakthroughs in history.
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- 42. A. E. Van Vogt. The
Voyage of the Space Beagle
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- 43. Greg Bear. Blood
Music
- Features a scientist who conducts an experiment in cell restructuring
that takes on a threatening life of its own.
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- 44. Nancy
Kress. Beggars
in Spain
- The
product of an experiment in genetic manipulation, superintelligent
Leisha Camden is forced to live a life apart from most ""ordinary""
people and seeks the companionship of other superhumans.
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- 45. Piers Anthony. Omnivore
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- 46. Isaac Asimov. I,
Robot
- In I, Robot Asimov chronicles the development of the robot
from its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection
in the not-so-distant future--a future in which humanity itself
may be rendered obsolete.
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- 47. Hal Clement. Mission of Gravity
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- 48. Philip Jose Farmer. To
Your Scattered Bodies Go
- Over the course
of this landmark five-book series, a remarkable cross-section
of compatriots, including Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mark Twain,
and Jack London, sets out to confront humankind's mysterious benefactors
and learn the truth, innocent or evil, about the astonishing and
legendary Riverworld.
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- 49. Aldous Huxley. Brave
New World
- A fantasy
of the future that sheds a blazing critical light on the present--
considered to be Aldous Huxley's most enduring masterpiece.
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- 50. David Gerrold. The Man Who Folded Himself
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- 51. George Orwell. Nineteen
Eighty-Four
- To Winston
Smith, a young man who works in the Ministry of Truth (Minitru
for short), come two people who transform his life completely.
One is Julia, whom he meets after she hands him a slip reading,
"I love you." The other is O'Brien, who tells him, "We shall meet
in the place where there is no darkness." The way in which Winston
is betrayed by the one and, against his own desires and instincts,
ultimately betrays the other, makes a story of mounting drama
and suspense.
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- 52. Robert Louis Stevenson. The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- In Stevenson's famous supernatural story of good versus evil,
meet the well-intentioned, wealthy physician Dr. Jeckyll who,
through the use of drugs, unleashes the dark side of his nature,
the hideous Mr. Hyde.
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- 53. Neal Stephenson. Snow
Crash
- In the not-too-distant future, the Mafia controls pizza delivery,
the United States is revealed to be a tangled web of corporate-franchise
city states, and the Internet is all-powerful. In this mind-altering
21st-century adventure, Hiro Protagonist is a warrior in the metaverse
and helps a friend who freaks out on a new designer drug called
Snow Crash.
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- 54. Philip Jose Farmer. Flesh
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- 55. James Blish. Cities
in Flight
- Originally published as four volumes nearly fifty years ago,
Cities in Flight brings together the famed "Okie novels" of science
fiction master James Blish. Named after the migrant workers of
America's Dust Bowl, these novels convey Blish's "history of the
future," a brilliant and bleak look at a world where cities roam
the Galaxy looking for work and a sustainable way of life.
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- 56. Gene Wolfe. Shadow
of the Torturer
- The saga of the Book of the New Sun centers around an orphan
whose lifelong quest transforms him from ruthless monster to savior
of a world.
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- 57. David Brin. Startide
Rising
- The Terran
exploration vessel Streaker has crashed on the uncharted water
world of Kithrup, bearing one of the most important discoveries
in galactic history. Below, a handful of her human and dolphin
crew battles a hostile planet to safeguard her secret--the fate
of the Progenitors.
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- 58. Samuel R. Delany. Triton
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- 59. John Brunner. Stand on Zanzibar
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- 60. Anthony Burgess. A
Clockwork Orange
- Anthony Burgess's
modern classic of youthful violence and social redemption, reissued
to include the controversial last chapter not previously published
in this country, with a new introduction by the author. This disturbing
novel creates an alarming futuristic vision of violence, high
technology, and authoritarianism.
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- 61. Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit
451
- Fahrenheit
451 is the temperature at which book paper burns. Fahrenheit 451
is a short novel set in the (perhaps near) future when "firemen"
burn books forbidden by the totalitarian "brave new world" regime.
The hero, according to Mr. Bradbury, is "a book burner who suddenly
discovers that books are flesh and blood ideas and cry out silently
when put to the torch".
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- 62. Walter M. Miller Jr. A
Canticle for Leibowitz
-
In
the Utah desert, Brother Francis of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz
has made a miraculous discovery: the relics of the martyr Isaac
Leibowitz himself, including the blessed blueprint and the sacred
shopping list. They may provide a bright ray of hope in a terrifying
age of darkness, a time of ignorance and genetic monsters that
are the unholy aftermath of the Flame Deluge. But as the spellbinding
mystery at the core of this extraordinary novel unfolds, it
is the search itself--for meaning, for truth, for love--that
offers hope to a humanity teetering on the edge of an abyss.
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- 63. Daniel Keyes. Flowers
for Algernon
- Mentally retarded
Charlie Gordon participates in an experiment which turns him into
a genius but only temporarily.
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- 64. John Christopher. No Blade of Grass
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- 65. David Brin. The
Postman
- He was a survivor, a wanderer who traded tales for food and
shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war.
Fate touches him one winter's day when he borrows the jacket of
a long-dead postal worker. The old, worn uniform still has power
as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest
tale, of a nation on the road to recovery.
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- 66. Samuel R. Delany. Dhalgren
- Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States.
Something has happened there.... The population has fled. Madmen
and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the
cloud-covered sky. And into this disaster zone comes a young man
-- poet, lover, and adventurer -- known only as the Kid. Tackling
questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary
marvel and a groundbreaking work of American magical realism.
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- 67. Fred Saberhagen. Berserker
- Created for a long-forgotten conflict, the berserkers are implacable,
inimical killing machines that have been programmed to rebuild
and redesign themselves. Their computer cunning and mechanical
evolution present ever-greater challenges to humanity's scattered
colonies.
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- 68. Edwin Abbott Abbott. Flatland
- A century-old classic of British letters that charmed and fascinated
generations of readers with its witty satire of Victorian society
and its unique insights, by analogy, into the fourth dimension.
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- 69. A. K. Dewdney. Planiverse
- A fable about a fictional civilization called Arde that inhabits
a two-dimensional computer universe. A brain-teasing mental puzzle
inviting readers to take the challenge and imagine how such a
universe might actually work.
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- 70. Robert L. Forward. Dragon's
Egg
- In a moving story of sacrifice and triumph, human scientists
establish a relationship with intelligent life forms--the cheela--living
on Dragon's Egg, a neutron star where one Earth hour is equivalent
to hundreds of their years. The cheela culturally evolve from
savagery to the discovery of science, and for a brief time men
are their diligent teachers.
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- 71. C. J. Cherryh. Downbelow
Station
- A blockbuster
space opera of the rebellion between Earth and its far-flung colonies.
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- 72. Octavia E. Butler. Dawn
- Known
for her African-American feminist perspective, the author presents
the first installment of a trilogy exploring the death of the
earth as we know it and the advent of interbreeding between humans
and extraterrestrials.
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- 73. Robert A. Heinlein. The
Puppet Masters
- Earth was being invaded by aliens and the top security agencies
were helpless: the aliens were controlling the mind of every person
they encountered. So it was up to Sam Cavanaugh, secret agent
for a powerful and deadly spy network, to find a way to stop them--which
meant he had to be invaded himself!
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- 74. Connie Willis. Doomsday
Book
- A time-traveling
history student is trapped in the Middle Ages, dangerously close
to the onset of the Black Plague. Her rescuers in 21st-century
Oxford battle their own deadly epidemic to reach her in time.
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- 75. Joe Haldeman. The
Forever War
- Private William
Mandella is a hero in spite of himself -- a reluctant conscript
drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space
and time to fight in a distant thousand-year conflict. Although
he never wanted to go to war, he performs his duties without rancor.
The true test will come when he returns to Earth. While he's
been aging months, centuries have passed on Earth.
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- 76. Harlan Ellison. Deathbird
Stories
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- 77. Arkady Strugatsky. Roadside Picnic
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- 78. Joan D. Vinge. The
Snow Queen
- The tale of
the ageless, corrupt Snow Queen and her wish to control Tiamat
forever. But her rule is quickly coming to an end unless she can
find a young mystic named Moon--the Snow Queen's clone.
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- 79. Ray Bradbury. The
Martian Chronicles
- In connected, chronological stories, Bradbury enthralls, delights
and challenges readers with his vision and his heartQtaking them
to a strange, breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.
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- 80. J.G. Ballard. Drowned World
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- 81. Kurt Vonnegut. Cat's
Cradle
- Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man
and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate
fate, it features a midget as the protagonist; a complete, original
theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future
that is at one blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.
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- 82. Kim Stanley Robinson. Red
Mars
- John Boone,
Maya Toitovna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission
whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars in order to release
moisture onto their desolate landscape.
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- 83. Upanishads
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- 84. Lewis Carroll. Alice
in Wonderland
- By falling down a rabbit hole and stepping through a mirror,
Alice experiences adventures with a variety of nonsensical characters.
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- 85. Douglas Adams. The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- Just before the Earth is demolished, Arthur Dent is plucked
off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect.
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- 86. Ursula K. Le Guin. The
Lathe of Heaven
- In the year
2002, George Orr discovers that his dreams are changing the world,
and when he falls into the hands of a power-mad psychiatrist,
he counters by dreaming up a perfect world that can overcome his
nightmares.
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- 87. John Wyndham. The Midwich Cuckoos
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- 88. Henry Kuttner. Mutant
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- 89. Stanislaw Lem. Solaris
- "Solaris" raises a question: Can one truly understand the universe
without first understanding what lies within?
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- 90. Hugo Gernsback. Ralph 124C41+
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- 91. Richard Matheson. I Am Legend
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- 92. Gregory Benford. Timescape
- In the year 1998, a group of scientists works desperatey to
communicate with the scientists of 1962, warning of an ecological
disaster that will destroy the oceans in the future--if it is
not averted in the past.
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- 93. Alfred Bester. The Demolished Man
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- 94. Karl Kapek. War with the Newts
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- 95. Ben Bova. Mars
- After landing on Mars, half-Navaho American geologist Jamie
Waterman clashes with Earth's bureaucrats as the team searches
for signs of life.
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- 96. Poul Anderson. Brain Wave
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- 97. Dan Simmons. Hyperion
- Hyperion is
the tale of seven people who make a pilgrimmage to a terrifying
creature called the Shrike in an attempt to save mankind. Stunningly
written and beautifully crafted, Simmons's Hyperion resonates
with technical achievement and the excitement and wonder found
only in the best SF.
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- 98. Michael Crichton. The
Andromeda Strain
- When an unmanned satellite returns to earth lethally contaminated,
four American scientists are ordered to a secret lab to work against
the threat of a orldwide epidemic.
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- 99. Thomas M. Disch. Camp Concentration
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- 100. Edgar Rice Burroughs. A
Princess of Mars
- It is the story of Virginian John Carter who--during the Civil
War--is drawn through astral projection to Mars, where he meets
the lovely Princess of Thelium and saves her life in a rousing
series of adventures.
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