1y ago

Our [New Scientist] writers pick their favourite science fiction books of all time

www.newscientist.com

Our writers pick their favourite science fiction books of all time

This is an interesting list. It's missing some of the true great classics, like Frankenstein, and it has a number of unusual, less well known titles, but there's a lot to like on it. There's certainly a lot for people to disagree about, but it may well have your less often cited favorites, too. What do you think?

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We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
The City & the City by China Miéville
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Chelsea Whyte God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
17776 by Jon Bois
War With the Newts by Karel Čapek
Flatland: A romance of many dimensions by A Square (Edwin Abbott Abbott)
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams
The Culture series by Iain M. Banks
- Really pleased to see 17776 getting some recognition. I don't even like American football and I love that story.
  
  If American Football was like that I would probably watch it.
  
  I couldn't decide if I wanted to add that one to my reading list or not. I hadn't heard of it before, and I'm not at all a sports guy, but it sounds interesting.
- The Mars trilogy is good, although Blue Mars is my favourite, Hitchhiker's is good but is more of a comedy, Flatland is ok but is more of a satire of Victorian society. The Planiverse by AK Dewdney is a better 2d world book.
  
  Hitchhiker’s is good but is more of a comedy
  You say that like that's a bad thing...
- Thanks for posting the list like this!
- Thanks for doing that
- Long Earth was good, lots of classics here as well
  
  I've read quite a number of the books on the list, but hadn't read that one, so I put it on my list.
  
  I got it because I love Sir Perry's Discworld books, and was blown away by how much I liked it!
Good to see a list not containing just the obvious stuff.
I've read about a third of this list, and the others sound good.
The only one I'm not sure about is flatland.
- It's old, more of an essay, interesting enough.
- Flatland is worth reading, though admittedly it was decades ago that I read it (it may even have been high school). It's clever; written in the late 1800s as a commentary on Victorian society and social classes. It's from the POV of characters in a 2D universe, with forays about 1D and 3D universes. As a side note, it has a bit about a potential 4D universe, and it was written before Einstein's relativity theory got people talking about higher dimensions. As I recall, it's fairly short.
- I've read ten of the twenty one. The fact that it was so different than these types of lists tend to be, without being a bunch of fan fiction or whatever, is why I posted it. Just seemed like an interesting list. Of the ones I've read, I didn't dislike any of them, though there are some I certainly wouldn't have put on an all-time greats list myself.
Mistborn is a really good series as well
Wow I haven't read a good chunk of this list, and I thought I was a sci-fi book afficionado. Thanks for adding to my summer reading list! Might start with either Parable of the Sower or Never Let Me Go.
- I haven't yet read Parable of the Sower, but I read Never Let Me Go recently. This is what I wrote about it in my notes to myself (no spoilers - certainly less than this article):
  This is an odd book. It's very slow paced, and not much actually happens. I think it's best to read it without knowing anything at all, so I'm going to avoid spoilers. It's a story told first person by a woman who attended a special boarding school. For a quarter of the book, there are barely even hints that there's anything unusual going on. We don't get an understanding of it until halfway, and even then not fully. I feel like this might have been better as a novella. That said, it was highly regarded and even made into a movie (that I never saw). The premise is really interesting, and the story moving, but for half the book we're just reading a woman reminiscing on her school days.
  I did enjoy it, but it's not one of those books that I'd comfortably recommend to anyone and everyone. It depends on the kinds of things you like and don't like.
Great stuff! Have read maybe a handful of those listed. Just in time for Summer.
- Which sounds most interesting to you?
  
  I saw an exhibit on Octavia E. Butler at the African American museum in DC. Had heard her name, but never read any of her work. "Kindred" sounds really interesting.
  Once I'm through my current reading backlog, I might just start going down this list over the Summer. Appreciate the posting.

29 comments