The 10 Best Science Fantasy Novels of All Time

Spaceships run on grammar, necromancers wear sunglasses, and a dying world still has a castle at the top. Some of these are Newbery classics, a few came out this year.

1. 1
   Code and Codex

   Yoon Ha Lee's 2026 space opera where a reality-bending language rules an empire and its Swan destroys every other tongue.
2. 2
   Ninefox Gambit

   Yoon Ha Lee's 2016 debut novel, in which calendar-driven 'exotic technologies' power a war fought with belief and mathematics.
3. 3
   Gideon the Ninth

   Tamsyn Muir's 2019 novel of necromancers and sword-swinging cavaliers solving a murder mystery in a decaying space palace.
4. 4
   A Wrinkle in Time

   Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 Newbery winner that sends Meg Murry across the universe by tesseract to rescue her father.
5. 5
   The Fifth Season

   N. K. Jemisin's Hugo-winning 2015 novel set on a far-future supercontinent where orogenes can still the earth's quakes.
6. 6
   Light from Uncommon Stars

   Ryka Aoki's 2021 novel mixing a violin teacher's deal with hell, a trans runaway prodigy and a family of alien refugees running a donut shop.
7. 7
   Lord Valentine's Castle

   Robert Silverberg's 1980 Majipoor novel about an amnesiac juggler on a colonized giant planet who may be its rightful ruler.
8. 8
   Perdido Street Station

   China Mieville's 2000 novel of New Crobuzon, a city of thaumaturgy, steam and monstrous slake-moths.
9. 9
   This Is How You Lose the Time War

   Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's 2019 epistolary novella about rival agents who fall in love across timelines.
10. 10
    The Gunslinger

    Stephen King's 1982 opener of The Dark Tower, following Roland Deschain across a world that has moved on.

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