The 22 Greatest Science Fiction Novels of All Time

Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 novel about a human raised on Mars returning to an Earth he does not understand.

Le Guin's 1974 study of an anarchist moon and the capitalist world it orbits.

Walter M. Miller Jr.'s 1959 chronicle of monks preserving knowledge across a post-nuclear dark age.

Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel that popularised the term metaverse and its pizza-delivering hacker hero.

Philip K. Dick's 1968 bounty-hunter novel about telling humans from replicants, later filmed as Blade Runner.

Douglas Adams's 1979 comedy of an Earthman hitching across a galaxy where the answer is 42.

Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel about a fireman whose job is to burn books.

William Gibson's 1984 debut that named cyberspace and launched cyberpunk.

Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, widely treated as the first work of science fiction.

Isaac Asimov's 1951 saga of psychohistory, in which mathematics predicts the fall of a galactic empire.

Andy Weir's 2011 survival novel about an astronaut stranded on Mars with potatoes and duct tape.

Joe Haldeman's 1974 novel in which relativity turns an interstellar war into centuries of homecoming.

Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 novel set on a frozen world whose inhabitants have no fixed gender.

Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel about a man unstuck in time and the firebombing of Dresden.

Liu Cixin's 2008 first contact novel, the first translated work to win the Hugo for Best Novel.

H. G. Wells's 1898 invasion novel that set the template for alien attack stories.

Frank Herbert's 1965 desert epic, winner of the first Nebula Award and co-winner of the Hugo, and the best-selling science fiction novel ever written.

Arthur C. Clarke's 1973 novel about an alien cylinder passing through the solar system and leaving without explanation.

Dan Simmons's 1989 Canterbury Tales in space, seven pilgrims travelling toward a creature called the Shrike.