Must Read Sci Fi and Fantasy Books
Your Picks: Top 100 Scientific discipline-Fiction, Fantasy Books More than than five,000 of you nominated. More than than sixty,000 of you voted. And now the results are in. The winners are an intriguing mix of classic and contemporary titles.
Opinion
Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books
More than than v,000 of y'all nominated. More than 60,000 of you lot voted. And at present the results are in. The winners of NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy survey are an intriguing mix of archetype and gimmicky titles. Over on NPR's pop civilization blog, Monkey Meet, you can find one fan's thoughts on how the listing shaped upward, get our experts' have, and have the chance to share your ain.
A quick word about what's here, and what's not: Our panel of experts reviewed hundreds of the virtually popular nominations and tossed out those that didn't fit the survey's criteria (after — we assure you — much passionate, thoughtful, gleefully nerdy discussion). You'll observe there are no young developed or horror books on this list, but sit tight, dear reader, we're saving those genres for summers yet to come up.
So, at last, here are your favorite science-fiction and fantasy novels. (And a printable version, to take with you to the bookstore.)
The Lord Of The Rings
Tolkien'south seminal three-volume epic chronicles the War of the Band, in which Frodo the hobbit and his companions prepare out to destroy the evil Band of Power and restore peace to Middle-world. The dear trilogy still casts a long shadow, having established some of the most familiar and enduring tropes in fantasy literature.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
In the first, hilarious volume of Adams' Hitchhiker's series, reluctant galactic traveler Arthur Paring gets swept up in some literally World-shattering events involving aliens, sperm whales, a depressed robot, mice who are more than they seem, and some really, really bad poetry.
Ender's Game
Young Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, bred to be a genius, is drafted to Boxing School where he trains to lead the century-long fight against the conflicting Buggers.
The Dune Chronicles
Follows the adventures of Paul Atreides, the son of a betrayed duke given up for dead on a treacherous desert planet and adopted by its tearing, nomadic people, who help him unravel his about unexpected destiny.
A Song Of Ice And Fire Series
As the Seven Kingdoms face a generation-long winter, the royal Stark family confronts the poisonous plots of the rival Lannisters, the emergence of the Neverborn demons, the arrival of barbarian hordes, and other threats.
1984
A Novel
Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities.
Fahrenheit 451
In a far future world, television dominates, and books are outlawed. The totalitarian government has ordered all books to be burned by "firemen," whose job is to start the fires rather than cease them. But one fireman begins to encounter the value of the printed discussion.
The Foundation Trilogy
A ring of psychologists, nether the leadership of psychohistorian Hari Seldon, plant a colony to encourage art, science, and engineering in the declining Galactic Empire and to preserve the accumulated knowledge of humankind.
Brave New World
Huxley's classic prophetic novel describes the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia devoid of individual freedom.
American Gods
On the plane home to nourish the funerals of his wife and best friend, Shadow, an ex-con, encounters an enigmatic stranger who seems to know a lot most him. When Shadow accepts the stranger'southward job offer, he finds himself plunged into a perilous game with the highest of stakes: the soul of America itself.
The Princess Bride
S. Morgenstern's Archetype Tale of True Honey and High Run a risk
This tale of a handsome subcontract male child who, aided by a drunken swordsman and a gentle giant, rescues a cute princess named Buttercup comes with a slyly humorous, metafictional border: Goldman claims to accept merely abridged an earlier text past one "S. Morgenstern" (actually a pseudonym) and peppers his text with clever commentary.
The Cycle Of Fourth dimension Series
At thirteen volumes and counting, this sweeping — some would say sprawling – richly imagined epic chronicles the struggle between servants of the Nighttime One and those of the champion of light known equally the Dragon Reborn.
Animal Farm
Farm animals overthrow their homo owners and gear up their own deeply (and familiarly) flawed government. Orwell'southward mordant satire of totalitarianism is still a mainstay of ninth-grade reading lists.
Neuromancer
Gibson's groundbreaking debut novel follows Case, a burned-out computer whiz, who is asked to steal a security lawmaking that is locked in the most heavily guarded databank in the solar system. A seminal work in the genre that would come up to be known as cyberpunk.
Watchmen
Equally former members of a disbanded group of superheroes called the Crimebusters outset turning up dead, the remaining members of the group try to discover the identity of the murderer earlier they, besides, are killed. A graphic novel.
I, Robot
Isaac Asimov inverse our perception of robots forever when he formulated the laws governing their beliefs. In I, Robot, Asimov chronicles the evolution of the robot through a series of interlinked stories: from its archaic origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-and so-distant future — a future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete.
Stranger In A Foreign Country
Valentine Michael Smith, born and raised on Mars, arrives on Globe stunning Western culture with his superhuman abilities.
The Kingkiller Chronicles
This suspenseful coming-of-age story folllows Kvothe every bit he recounts his transformation from a magically gifted young man into the most notorious wizard, musician, thief and assassin in his earth.
Slaughterhouse-5
Billy Pilgrim returns home from World War II only to exist kidnapped past aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, who teach him that fourth dimension is an eternal present.
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley's chilling portrait of a scientist obsessed with creating life (whose eventual success comes at too not bad a price) was amid the first works of science fiction ever produced. Its potent allegorical power, compelling ethical and philosophical themes, and its sheer creepiness have ensured it remains one of the almost enduring and influential every bit well.
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
Dick's trippy novel tells of sophisticated off-earth androids who turn against their creators, slip back to a post-apocalyptic World, and must be hunted down past compensation hunter Rick Deckard. The book inspired — albeit very loosely — the 1982 Ridley Scott motion picture Blade Runner.
The Handmaid'due south Tale
A chilling await at the near futurity presents the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Commonwealth of Gilead, one time the Usa, an oppressive globe where women are no longer immune to read and are valued just equally long as they are feasible for reproduction.
The Dark Tower Series
Roland, the world's last gunslinger, tracks an enigmatic Homo in Black toward a forbidding dark belfry, fighting forces both mortal and other worldly on his quest.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Ii astronauts detect their journey into space and their very lives jeopardized past the jealousy of an boggling reckoner named HAL.
The Stand
A monumentally devastating plague leaves simply a few survivors who, while experiencing dreams of a battle between good and evil, move toward an actual confrontation every bit they drift to Boulder, Colo.
Snow Crash
Weaving gimmicky imagery with Sumerian myths, Stephenson's third novel revolves around a mysterious "pseudo-narcotic" Snow Crash that is capable of affecting people both within — and without — the alternate-reality Internet called the "Metaverse."
The Martian Chronicles
The tranquillity of Mars is disrupted by the earthmen who have come up to conquer infinite, colonize the planet, and escape a doomed World.
Cat's Cradle
A young author decides to interview the children of a scientist primarily responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb.
The Sandman Series
Gaiman originally told his tale of Morpheus, the Dream King, whose interactions with mortals rarely stop well, and whose fractious extended family unit includes the personifications of Decease, Despair, Desire and Destiny, in a 75-issue comic book series over several years; the hugely influential serial is now collected in ten trade volumes.
A Clockwork Orangish
Burgess created his ain youth slang for this acid satire of contemporary culture which follows young Alex as he makes his merry fashion through a dystopia of drugs, sex and ruthless violence, only to be chosen for a psychological experiment meant to mend his ways.
Starship Troopers
In one of Robert A. Heinlein's virtually controversial novels, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest kick camp in the universe and into boxing with the Terran Mobile Infantry confronting humankind'south most frightening enemy.
Watership Downward
Often described as "the Aeneid of rabbits," this is the story of immature rabbit Fiver and his brother Hazel, who set out on an epic journey to find a new abode subsequently their own warren is destroyed. Watership Downwardly began equally a series of improvised stories writer Richard Adams told his immature daughters during automobile trips. Adams besides invented the linguistic communication, Lapine, spoken past Hazel and Fiver.
Dragonflight
At a fourth dimension when the number of Dragonriders has fallen too depression for safety and only one Weyr trains the creatures and their riders, the Red Star approaches Pern, threatening the planet with disaster.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
A one-armed computer technician, a radical blond bombshell, an crumbling academic and a sentient all-knowing reckoner lead the lunar population in a revolution against Earth's colonial rule.
A Anthem For Leibowitz
Miller'south 1959 novel follows the Monks of the Gild of St. Leibowitz equally they attempt to preserve the remnants of civilization after a nuclear war.
The Time Auto
Wells' classic 1895 story of an unassuming British inventor who creates a device that sends him hurtling into the far futurity – A.D. 802,701, to be precise – where subterranean Morlocks prey upon the childlike Eloi.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
Professor Arronax and his two companions, trapped aboard a fantastic submarine every bit prisoners of the deranged Helm Nemo, come up confront to face with exotic ocean creatures and strange sights subconscious from the world above.
Flowers For Algernon
When brain surgery makes a mouse into a genius, dull-witted Charlie Gordon wonders if it might besides work for him. It does ... but and so the mouse begins to backslide.
The State of war Of The Worlds
With avant-garde machines of destruction, aliens from another planet dive down on planet Earth and brainstorm their conquest, in the archetype sci-fi work by the author of The Time Automobile.
The Bister Chronicles
Zelazny's tales of Corwin, prince of the "true world" of Bister (of which our Globe is merely a shadow) and his son Merlin, a magic-user/estimator hacker, have spanned several decades. Amid the eternal struggle between Gild and Chaos, Zelazny delights in tossing in allusions to Shakespeare, the Tarot and quantum mechanics.
The Belgariad
Edding's five-book epic fantasy follows young farmboy Garion as he is drawn into a quest for a stolen mystical orb, and the rich earth of prophecy and ability that surrounds it.
The Mists Of Avalon
Retells the legend of King Arthur as perceived past the women cardinal to the tale, from the zealous Morgaine, sworn to uphold her goddess at any cost, to the devout Gwenhwyfar, pledged to the male monarch merely drawn to another.
Mistborn Trilogy
In a world where special magic users chosen Allomancers can utilise metals to raise their physical and mental abilities, a young thief discovers her destiny and sets out to overthrow the Lord Ruler.
Ringworld
Niven's hugely influential 1970 novel of an outer space trek to a mysterious object – a vast bogus world in the shape of a ring – that goes horribly incorrect.
The Left Hand Of Darkness
While on a mission to the planet Gethen — a world whose inhabitants can change their gender — earthling Genly Ai is sent by leaders of the nation of Orgoreyn to a concentration army camp. The exiled prime government minister of the nation of Karhide tries to rescue him.
The Silmarillion
These creation myths of Tolkien'south Middle-world, for those who institute The Lord of the Rings too breezy and slight: In the author's feature Beowulfian prose, he recounts the legends of the globe'south beginnings, the downfall of its gods and men, and the events that changed the face of Middle-earth forever.
The Once And Time to come King
Describes King Arthur's life from his childhood to the coronation, creation of the Round Tabular array, and search for the Holy Grail.
Neverwhere
Gaiman'south wry, darkly whimsical tale of an average immature businessman who stops to help a girl bleeding on a London sidewalk and finds himself pulled into a baroque subterranean world.
Babyhood'south Terminate
The author questions the survival of mankind in this science-fiction tale well-nigh Overlords from outer infinite who boss the globe.
Contact
In 1999, a multinational team of astronauts ventures deep into outer space, where they come face to face with an advanced alien civilisation.
The Hyperion Cantos
Seven pilgrims undertake a voyage to the earth of Hyperion — dominated by a fearsome and mysterious creature chosen the Shrike — where they hope to acquire the underground that volition salvage humanity.
Stardust
In the repose English hamlet of Wall, Tristran Thorn embarks on a remarkable journey through the world of Faerie to recover a fallen star for his lover, the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester.
Cryptonomicon
More than 50 years after Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse and Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe are assigned to Detachment 2702, a secret cryptographic mission, their grandchildren — Randy and Amy — join forces to create a "data haven" in the Due south Pacific, only to uncover a massive conspiracy with roots in Disengagement 2702.
World State of war Z
An Oral History of the Zombie War
An account of the decade-long conflict between humankind and hordes of the predatory undead is told from the perspective of dozens of survivors — soldiers, politicians, civilians and others — who depict in their ain words the epic human battle for survival.
The Last Unicorn
The concluding unicorn leaves the protection of her enchanted lavender forest to search for her own kind, with the assistance of Schmedrick, the only occasionally successful sorcerer, and dreamer Molly Grue.
The Forever War
Drafted into the ranks of Earth's interstellar warriors, private William Mandella finds his fight confronting the Taurans secondary to the side-effects of faster-than-light infinite travel, which affects the rate at which he ages.
Small Gods
A Novel of Discworld
Brutha, a simple man leading a quiet life tending his garden, finds his life irrevocably changed when his god, speaking to him through a tortoise, sends him on a mission of peace.
The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever
In this first trilogy, reclusive, guilt-ridden writer Thomas Covenant finds himself transported to a magical realm where he is hailed as a hero who wields powerful magic — and where he finds his leprosy miraculously cured. Ultimately, he must defeat the malevolent Lord Foul to save the Country — and his own sanity.
The Vorkosigan Saga
In a human being colony on ane of a series of planets connected past wormholes, a beau who suffers from a series of concrete disabilities (the result of an bump-off attempt on his royal parents) grows up to get a powerful military leader.
Going Postal
A Novel of Discworld
Sentenced to death for forgery and swindling, Moist von Lipwig accepts an offer of a pardon in exchange for revamping an aboriginal post office, but his efforts are thwarted by tons of undelivered mail, an eighteen,000-year-old ghost postman, his shoe-wielding new girlfriend, and murderous characters who want the post office shut down.
The Mote In God's Center
The accidental killing of a group of emissaries to Earth threatens man'due south survival.
The Sword Of Truth Series
Young Richard Cypher gradually embraces his destiny as the Seeker of Truth, and sets out to finish the evil that others would unleash.
The Route
In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, mail service-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son brand their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the terminal remnants of their own humanity.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
In nineteenth century England, all is going well for rich, reclusive Mr Norrell, who has regained some of the ability of England'due south magicians from the past, until a rival magician, Jonathan Strange, appears and becomes Mr Norrell's student.
I Am Legend
A lone human being survivor in a globe that is overrun by vampires, Robert Neville leads a drastic life in which he must barricade himself in his dwelling house every dark and chase down the starving undead by day.
The Riftwar Saga
Evil entities have opened a rift in the fabric of space-fourth dimension, plunging the world of Medkemia into peril. As the battle between Guild and Chaos threatens to engulf everything, reluctant wizard Pug is the only hope of a g worlds.
The Sword of Shannara Trilogy
Over the course of three novels, several generations of the Ohmsford family observe themselves retrieving magical artifacts in the desperate promise to fight evil.
The Conan The Barbaric Series
Howard's original set up of interlinked stories featuring his musculus-leap warrior represents a classic kind of sword-and-sorcery fantasy adventure in all its pulpy, richly imaginative celebrity.
The Farseer Trilogy
An wily assassin plies his trade while his uncle the Prince confronts attackers who are turning people into emotionless, zombie-like "Forged ones."
The Time Traveler's Wife
Passionately in love, Clare and Henry vow to hold onto each other and their marriage every bit they struggle with the effects of Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition that casts Henry involuntarily into the world of time travel.
The Way Of Kings
Introduces the world of Roshar through the experiences of a war-weary royal compelled by visions, a high-born youth condemned to military slavery, and a woman who is desperate to save her impoverished firm.
Journeying To The Center Of The Earth
Follows Professor Lidenbrock, his nephew Axel and their guide Hans as they venture deep into a volcanic crater in Republic of iceland on a journey that leads them to the center of the world and to incredible and horrifying discoveries.
The Fable Of Drizzt Series
Drizzt Do'Urden, a Dark Elf, finds take a chance, peril and awesome magical power as he confronts the underground civilization of the evil and treacherous matriarchal race of Drow elves.
Old Man's War
Enlisting in the Army on his 75th altogether, John Perry joins an interstellar state of war betwixt Globe and alien enemies who would stake claims on the few existing inhabitable planets, unaware that the conflict involves much more than than he understands.
The Diamond Age
The story of an engineer who creates a device to raise a girl capable of thinking for herself reveals what happens when a young girl of the poor underclass obtains the device.
Rendezvous With Rama
During the 22nd century, a space probe's investigation of a mysterious, cylindrical asteroid brings man into contact with an actress-galactic culture.
The Kushiel'due south Legacy Series
Sold into indentured servitude at the exotic Dark Court as a child, Phedre faces a hard selection between honor and duty as she deals with a globe of glittering luxury, conspiracy, sacrifice, and betrayal. Two subsequent trilogies chronicle the adventures of her adopted son and her distant descendant.
The Dispossessed
An Cryptic Utopia
Unwilling to have that his anarchist world must be separated from the rest of the civilized universe, Shevek, a vivid physicist, risks his life by traveling to the utopian mother planet of Urras.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
When the carnival comes to town, two boys unearth the terrifying and horrible secrets that lurk within Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show and larn the consequences of wishes, as a sinister and evil forcefulness is at piece of work in Greenish Town, Ill.
Wicked
The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the Due west
Set in an Oz where a morose Wizard battles suicidal thoughts, the story of the greenish-skinned Elphaba, otherwise known as the Wicked Witch of the West, profiles her equally an animal-rights activist striving to avenge her beloved sister'due south death.
The Malazan Book Of The Fallen series
Erickson'southward densely plotted series jumps around in time to relate the vicissitudes of the sprawling Malazan Empire, a place of shifting alliances, mysterious mage guilds, assassinator gods and military uprisings.
The Eyre Affair
In a globe where you can actually become lost (literally) in literature, Thursday Side by side, a notorious Special Operative in literary detection, races against time to stop the world's Tertiary Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping characters, including Jane Eyre, from works of literature, forcing her to dive into the pages of a novel to finish literary homicide, in a wildly imaginative, mesmerizing thriller.
The Culture Series
A science-fiction series by the author of the Wasp Mill features a symbiotic human and motorcar society that is engaged in a galaxy-broad boxing to the death betwixt the Idrians, who fight for their faith, and the Civilisation, which defends its right to be.
The Crystal Cave
Stewart'due south beginning chapter in her five-volume accept on the Arthurian legend is told from the point of view of immature Merlin, who reluctantly engineers the nascence of Arthur.
Anathem
Raz, who has lived in a monastery since babyhood, away from the violent upheavals of the exterior world, becomes one of a grouping of formerly cloistered scholars who are appointed by a higher power to avert an impending disaster.
The Codex Alera Serial
In the country of Alera, where people bond with the furies — elementals of globe, air, burn, water, and metal — young Tavi struggles to cope with his lack of magical talent, until his homeland erupts into conflict between rebels and loyalists and Tavi discovers that he holds the key to his realm'south survival.
The Book Of The New Dominicus
In the distant future, after the lord's day has cooled and dimmed, the disgraced torturer Sevarian recounts his difficult-fought ascension to accented power.
The Thrawn Trilogy
V years later the fall of the Empire, a dying part of the Empire all the more unsafe nigh death has only discovered something that could bring it back, the concluding of the Emperor's warlords, Admiral Thrawn.
The Outlander Series
Hurtled back through time more than than 200 hundred years to Scotland in 1743, Claire Randall finds herself in the midst of a world torn apart by violence, pestilence and revolution, and haunted by her feelings for a young soldier.
The Elric Saga
Elric of Melnibone, an albino prince, travels in the Transport Which Sails Over Land and Sea to the city of Dhoz-Kam, through the Shade Gate to the Pulsing Cavern where the magic swords Stormbringer and Mournblade await him.
The Illustrated Man
Eighteen science fiction stories bargain with love, madness and death on Mars, Venus and in infinite.
Sunshine
All hope for stopping the vampiric aristocracy from decision-making Earth depends on human being SOFs (Special Other Forces) and the success of their effort to recruit Sunshine, the daughter of legendary sorcerer Onyx Blaise.
A Burn Upon The Deep
Set in a far-time to come where space has been portioned into "regions of thought," a human expedition to an ancient data archive unleashes the Blight, a superintelligent entity capable of destroying thousands of worlds.
The Caves Of Steel
Fearing a fierce confrontation between Earthmen and Spacers, Detective Baley and his new partner, a robot, investigate the murder of a Spacetown scientist
The Mars Trilogy
On a mission to provide Mars with an Earth-like temper, John Boone, Maya Toitovna, Frank Chalmers and Arkady Bogdanov meet potent resistance from those who volition fight to the decease to prevent Mars from existence changed.
Friction match's Hammer
As the slap-up Hamner-Brown comet, dubbed Lucifer's Hammer past the press, approaches Earth, various business executives, politicians, criminals, journalists and scientists await the impending cataclysm and its general and personal effects with decidedly differing feelings
Doomsday Book
Stranded in the 14th century — a fourth dimension of superstition and fear — fourth dimension traveler Kivrin becomes an unlikely angel of hope during history'south darkest 60 minutes and awaits rescue past her comrades.
Perdido Street Station
In the squalid, Gothic city of New Crobuzon, a mysterious half-man, half-bird stranger comes to Isaac, a gifted only eccentric scientist, with a request to assist him fly, merely Isaac'southward obsessive experiments and attempts to grant the request unleash a terrifying dark force on the unabridged metropolis.
The Xanth Series
In Anthony'due south pun-besotted magical realm (which is shaped a lot like Florida), every human is born with a unique magical ability, which they use navigate a landscape full of dragons, goblins, harpies, centaurs and all style of eldritch creatures.
The Space Trilogy
Philologist Edwin Ransom travels to Mars and Venus, and makes a serial of dramatic discoveries about Earth's place in the solar system – and the nature of a threat it unwittingly faces.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books
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